


For Laserblast, Sonata in D

by anonymousEDward



Category: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes
Genre: Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending, Assisted Suicide, Character Study, Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dubious Consent, Extremely Dubious Consent, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Post- Let's Fight To The End, Pre- Let's Be Forgiven, SEE CHAPTER 1 FOR IN-DEPTH WARNINGS!, Therapy, Venomous Backstory, terminally ill character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:40:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22511893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousEDward/pseuds/anonymousEDward
Summary: Venomous is miserable on the empty planet with Fink and decides to head home. Before he can make things up to Boxman, he needs to make things right with himself.AKA: Venomous gets some much-needed therapy.
Relationships: Lord Boxman/Professor Venomous, implied past Silverspark/Shadowy Laserblast
Comments: 148
Kudos: 126





	1. Warnings

This is the landing page for the fic affectionately referred to as "Therapy Fic". This fic is not my usual light and smutty fare, though it does have a happy ending. Please check the tags. More in-depth spoilers are below for some of the more triggery topics in case you are considering reading but are worried about the tags. 

Minor Character Death and Assisted Suicide refer to the same character - Venomous's terminally ill twin brother, who he killed. 

Extremely Dubious Consent - It is heavily implied that Silverspark had sex with Shadowy Laserblast (AKA Shadowy Figure), rather than the man who would become Professor Venomous. Venomous-as-Laserblast's body was involved, but Carol had unknowingly been dating Shadowy Laserblast the entire time, not realizing they are two people in the same body. Carol consented and Shadowy Laserblast consented, but Venomous-as-Laserblast was unaware. 


	2. Introduction

_Venomous was drunk. Again. There wasn't much else to do on this planet._

_Sure, blowing up buildings had been fun for a few weeks, but it hadn't taken long for that entertainment to go stale. He kept looking over his shoulder, looking for_ him _._

_Of course, Boxman was never there. Venomous had been the one to push him away, to kick him out of his own factory. Something else he'd sworn never to do._

_Venomous took another swig. He could see why his father had turned to drinking. He felt so floaty, like his own body and his stupid, worthless heart were miles away._

_He was pretty sure he was a worse father than his own was. He hoped he was at least a better boss._

_Fink! He stumbled to his feet. Surely it was past her bedtime now. He doubted he'd be able to get his eyes to focus enough to read her a story, but all the books on this planet were blank anyway, so…_

_He tripped over the desk chair as he stood. It had a lot more legs than he'd remembered._

_He stumbled down the hall, finding Fink's room by luck more than by design. He peeked in, expecting to see her playing her videos game, but the console was dark._

_She was curled up in a ball in bed, breathing soft and even._

_She never used to be able to sleep without a bedtime story. He wondered vaguely when that had changed. He bit back a sob, stumbling back into the hall._

_He hated this place. He hated living like this. He missed Boxy and the bots and even the heroes they'd fought time and time again._

_"I can't do this," he croaked, hearing the slur in his own voice. He staggered back into his office._

_Nutral Znoe Thearpist, he typed into the console._

_"Showing results for 'Neutral Zone Therapist'," the computer read. There was a list of blurry names Venomous was too drunk to read all that well. He clicked the first one, hesitating only a moment over the Call button._

_It was time to change._

Introduction

Arin Aarinsdottir (yes, her father had fancied himself quite the comedian) unlocked the door to her practice with a sense of resignation. She did not, as a general rule, work on Saturdays.

Certainly, she had paperwork to complete between clients or at the end of the day. Worst came to worst, she would work on Sunday. But not Saturday, oh no. Saturday was for music. She spent hours tickling the ivories on the piano at home, sometimes returning to old classics like Mozart or Flippledorp, sometimes playing tunes of her own creation. Saturday was her sanctuary, her haven from the minds and troubles of others.

Except for today.

The call had come at 2 AM, through the afterhours line. The caller in question had wound up in the queue for rescheduling and had left the following message.

"'lo Misssss Aarons-doter," it began – a poor start, considering the level of butchery to her last name, not to mention the demotion from Doctor to Miss. The voice was slurred – clearly some sort of inebriation.

"Need ssssome therapy. Gotta- gotta do better. I can't-" the man's voice broke on a small, pitiful sob. "I can't keep livin' like thissss, I got- I got Fink t' think 'bout…" Arin wasn't sure who or what Fink was. Really it could be anything from a child to a pet, but it was clear that this 'Fink' was very important to him.

"I know I won't have thuh- the _balls_ t' do this when 'm sober," the man continued. "But I can't- I juss missss 'im so muh-much-" The man proceeded to break into heart-wrenching sobs – less boohoo, more 'ahuhh ahuuunh' – the ugly sort of tears that came from somewhere deep in the chest. The tears went on and on, until the message was cut for length.

Dr. Arin Aarinsdottir cherished her Saturdays, but she was also young and idealistic and had a soft heart.

So she had called back and left a message for a man apparently named, per his voicemail, "Professor Venomous".

"Thank you for your call," she said, keeping her tone professional. "I have an opening today at 10 AM. I will be expecting you." She recited her office address by rote before disconnecting the call.

She was honestly a little surprised that the man showed up.

Professor Venomous was a tall, thin man with purple skin and dark hair. He wore boots and a lab coat and gave every appearance of being crisp and well put-together, but upon closer inspection, his clothes were wrinkled, his shirt bearing a nearly unnoticeable stain. He had dark smudges under his eyes, not quite covered by makeup, and he scratched at the stubble on his face with the irritation of a man who had forgotten to shave for a few days too many.

With him was a rodent-adjacent child, small and green. Her tail twitched as she fussed with the handheld gaming device in her mitten-covered hands. Her clothes, at least, were clean. Her hair was brushed, but there were crumbs in the fur on her face, like she hadn't cleaned herself after eating.

"You must be Professor Venomous," Dr. Aarinsdottir said smoothly, extending a hand for him to shake.

"Uh, yeah." He stepped closer cautiously, every movement controlled as if he didn't trust gravity to hold him to the earth. He smelled faintly of hard cider, she noted.

"This is my minion. Fink." He gestured to the rodent-adjacent next to him, who huffed and gave Arin a distrustful look.

"It's very nice to meet you, Fink," Arin said, offering her hand to the child as well. Fink did not shake it.

"Just… wait here, okay Fink?"

"Sure thing, Boss!" she chirped, suddenly cheerful. She hopped up onto one of the couches in the waiting room, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as she mashed buttons furiously.

"Shall we?" Arin asked, gesturing to the door.

Professor Venomous visibly steeled himself before walking inside.

"Perhaps we should begin by establishing what it is you hope to accomplish over our sessions," Dr. Aarinsdottir said after a couple minutes of awkward silence. Normally, her patients felt driven to fill the quiet, but the clearly hungover professor seemed quite content to stew in silence.

Professor Venomous shifted, his tongue flicking out in what she assumed was a nervous gesture. It was forked like a snake, or some sort of lizard – presumably how he got his alias.

"I, uh." He swallowed. "I've made. A lot of mistakes." He had a peculiar way of speaking in his nervousness, starting and stopping as if he were biting his sentences in half. An oddly decisive tentativeness. "Some more… recently than others."

She nodded in encouragement.

"I want to. Be better. I guess. For Fink. And for…" he trailed off, drooping slightly. "I pushed someone away by doing… something really stupid." It was interesting how his whole speech pattern changed with the topic. Was it a show of trust or a loss of control?

"I betrayed and- and _hurt_ someone I really care about. And, uh. He left me."

Arin kept her face perfectly neutral. She hoped this wasn't a domestic abuse situation.

"I wasn't- I wasn't myself. At the time."

She kept her face blank, though she was sure she radiated skepticism.

"I meant that literally," Professor Venomous said. He put his head in his hands. "I, uh… fuck. This is- It's a long story and. It's such a mess. _Everything_ is a mess." His voice went toneless, bland in its bleakness. She could almost hear the emotional walls clanging shut.

"Not everything," she said. "And it won't always be."

Venomous snorted and muttered, "Yeah, right."

"If you're untangling a knot," Arin said, "You start from one end. So tell me – shall we start from the beginning of your story? Or the end?"

"That doesn't even make sense," Venomous grumbled.

Arin smiled politely and waited.

"Oh, fine." He sat back with a huff. "Since I'm already here." He smoothed his hair back from his face, then opened his mouth and shut it before finally saying:

"You know about Schrödinger's cat, right?" he asked, scratching at his face. "As long as the cat's in the box, it's both dead and alive."

There was quite a bit more to it than that, but Arin decided against pressing the point.

"Laserblast is dead. And, uh. Laserblast is alive." He swallowed, offering her a sharp-toothed smile that more resembled a grimace. "Because – because I _am_ him. Or, well, was. But I wasn't always."

Something must have shown on her face, because he let out a faint laugh that verged on a sigh.

"Yeah, I told you it was complicated."

"Start from the beginning," Arin said patiently. "We'll untangle it from there."

"Alright, the beginning." Professor Venomous sighed. "I grew up in an ordinary household. A mother, a father, and a brother... no family dino, but we had a white picket fence, so I suppose that counted for something."

"Tell me about you family," Arin said, keeping her tone light, like a suggestion.

"My brother and I were twins," Venomous said, with a crooked sort of grin. "Our parents weren't exactly creative geniuses and named us after themselves." He rolled his eyes.

Arin Aarinsdottir, daughter of Aaron Aarinsdottir could very much relate.

"I was named Trevor, after my father – not even Trevor Jr, just Trevor for some Cob awful reason – and he was named Lawrence, after our mother Laura." Venomous smiled, if the expression could be called such; rather, it was more of a bitter twist of the lips, his eyes narrowed as if focused on something dark and distant.

"My father certainly bet on the wrong horse, didn't he." It was a statement, not a question.

"Why do you say that?" Arin prompted.

Venomous leveled her with an annoyed look. "I'm a villain, in case you haven't gotten the memo."

"Tell me about your brother," she said instead, deciding to change the subject.

Venomous smiled faintly. "Mmm, good instincts," he murmured.

Arin allowed herself to arch an eyebrow, hoping to encourage him further.

"Lawrence and I were quite the pair of troublemakers," he began, the words flowing smoothly like he was reading a bedtime story. "Always into everything. We manifested our powers as infants, you see. We were real prodigies - must've got that from mother." His wistful expression flickered like a dying lightbulb.

"She was a hero, you know," Venomous said, his tone casual in a forced way. "Father never forgave her for outshining him - not as long as I knew him."

Venomous paused, watching her.

Dr. Aarinsdottir suspected this was a test of some sort. It was tempting to chase after details about his parents – the low-hanging fruit of the psychological world, and often the most complex to pick apart.

Often. Not always.

"We were talking about your brother," she prompted.

Perhaps she was reading too much into things, but she thought she saw a glimmer of respect in his eyes.

Venomous flung himself flush against the armchair's back with a huff.

"Lawrence had laser vision," Venomous said, sentences clipped once more. "He could kill plants. Melt metal. Our parents were quite impressed."

"Laserblast?" Arin couldn't help but ask.

Venomous smiled, the expression bitter as unripe fruit.

"He called himself that, yeah," Venomous said. "Whenever we played heroes, he was Laserblast, the most powerful hero in the land."

"And who were you?" Arin asked.

"Pff. That depended on his mood. Sometimes I was his sidekick, Suckerpunch. Sometimes I was his evil nemesis, Drain-o." He chuckled. "It was more fun playing the villain, even then. And it was certainly easier on my toys."

"I don't follow," she said.

"He was... careless. With other people's things."

_"Come on, Trev! Quit being boring!" Lawrence whined, swinging from a low-hanging tree branch like a monkey._

_"I'm not boring," Trevor insisted, clutching his WonderMan action figure to his chest._

_"You are!" his brother insisted, trying to lift himself up onto the branch._

_"Am not, Laser! Quit being a jerk!"_

_"Fine! Help me up."_

_Trevor grumbled, but put down the toy to help give his brother a boost. His brother stood on his back, grunting as he hauled himself up and then-_

_Pzzt! A familiar, dreaded sound._

_"Laser, no!"_

_It was too late. WonderMan was barely recognizable, the plastic warped and melted._

_He could hear Laser giggling as Trevor picked the ruined toy up, dropping it with a yelp when it hurt his fingers. Tears filled his vision._

_"You broke it!" he wailed. "I'm telling!"_

_"No! It was an accident!" Laser insisted, tearing up as well. "Don't be mad! It was an accident!"_

_Trevor wiped his face. He always felt awful when he made his brother cry. "I'm still mad at you," he said, "but I won't tell."_

_"Good!" Laser said, wiping away his tears with a sunny smile. "Besides, you're too old to play with dollies, anyway! Now fight me, Drain-o!"_

Venomous scratched at his stubble with a sheepish grin. "Not the most flattering story," he admitted, "For either of us. But it was the first one I thought of."

"It sounds like that incident upset you," Arin said.

Venomous waved her words away like a fly. "Please, that's just how he was! Kids are assholes."

Two very different statements, she noted. She suspected that was intentional.

"Why Drain-o?"

"I- I'm sorry, what?" Venomous's faintly amused expression faded to something more cagey.

"Why the name Drain-O?" she clarified.

Venomous squirmed back, like a snake trying to burrow into sand. "Well that's. That was my power. I drained energy."

"A formidable skill indeed," she murmured, remembering the world-devastating event that took place weeks ago. The whole world had been drained then – and would have remained so without the President of the Universe's intervention, or so it was rumored.

It had felt like dying.

"My parents hadn't thought so," Venomous said, voice hushed. "None of us did. My brother was the one with potential - I was just a leech." Venomous let out an amused-sounding huff, though his smile was bitter. "He was always the favorite. I was the problem child."

"Did they say that to you directly? Or might you be projecting?"

Venomous slumped in his chair. "I suppose they never said it, not in so many words," he admitted. "But they did treat me differently. When Laser broke my toys, it was always brushed off as an accident. When I broke his, I got punished." Venomous rolled his shoulders in a shrug. "When we rough housed, I was either playing too rough or was being too thin-skinned, depending on who was crying in the end."

"How did that make you feel?" Arin asked.

"How do you think?" he fired back.

"That's not an answer."

Professor Venomous pinched the bridge of his nose. "It sucked, okay? It sucked. No one took my side. Not ever."

Whether that was actually true or not was irrelevant in this particular moment. Dr. Aarinsdottir had not been present and couldn't say either way. What mattered was Venomous's perception of events.

"He died when we were twelve," Venomous said, softly. "They blamed me for that too. And before you ask – that one, they _did_ tell me to my face."

There it was. That was the thread to unpick before she could even begin to untangle this man's troubles.

Unfortunately, their hour was long past – and the girl outside was likely to start worrying.

"Come back next week," Dr. Aarinsdottir said. "10 AM, next Saturday. Let me give you your homework for next time." She allowed herself a faint smile.

"I taught night school," Venomous said, catching on to her little joke. " _I'm_ the one – I _was_ the one giving out homework." Nonetheless, the slight dissipation of tension in his gait told her that it was appreciated.

"No more alcohol," she said firmly. "I want you fully sober and ready to work. We have a lot to do."

"Tch." Venomous rolled his eyes.

"I want you to think of some goals for your therapy," she continued, "both short and long term. We will go over them during our next session."

"Fine, fine…" he was already facing away, reaching for the door.

"And, Venomous?" This was softer. After all, she wasn't speaking as a therapist right now.

"Hm?"

"We're out of time for today, but I wanted to say… People, in their grief, will say terrible things. And, whether they meant it or not, it was wrong of your parents to blame you for your brother's death."

Venomous stood frozen for a moment, hand still on the door. And then he turned, and smiled.

"No… they were right. After all, I'm the one who killed him."

Then, with a swish of his coat, he stepped out of her office, scooped up his minion… and left. So suddenly, in fact, that it was several minutes of stunned silence later that Arin realized he had left without paying.

She wondered if he would return next week – and was unsure whether she even wanted him to.

That evening, she sat at the piano, a glass of grape juice in one of her hands, and stared down at the keys.

Professor Venomous. Previously level negative seven, current POW level unknown. First appeared on the villain "scene" three weeks after Laserblast's death. A Laserblast who, according to Professor Venomous, died long, long ago.

She drained her glass in several long gulps, her secondary set of arms already rifling through the printed sheet music she kept next to her piano where she wrote down some of her little compositions. Glass empty, she skimmed through them, finally finding a blank page.

After all, this felt like the start of something new.


	3. Exposition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is your last reminder to read the tags and turn back if you need to.

They did not talk about his parting words during their second session, or the next. Instead they focused on softer, easier topics.

Venomous arrived at their second appointment in much the same state as the first – hungover and rumpled.

"I see you neglected to complete your homework," Dr. Aarinsdottir said. She kept her tone neutral and her expression as smooth as the chitin on her legs.

"I see _you_ neglected to report me to the police," he said, flinging himself into the chair with a grimace. "No statute of limitations on murder, after all."

"I am your therapist," she said simply.

"I haven't paid you."

"Regardless."

There was that flicker of surprise once more. She felt like she'd won something – perhaps some measure of respect.

Venomous pulled up his sleeve and tapped at his watch.

"The money is in your account," he said, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his coat as he flattened himself back against the chair.

"Thank you," she returned primly. "Now, why don't we talk about some of your goals for therapy – hopefully you have something more concrete than last time."

Professor Venomous's lips pinched together like he'd tasted something bitter. "Ah, about that…"

She waited for him to elaborate until the silence stretched painfully thin.

"Next week," she said, "you will complete you homework. You will come up with goals. You will quit drinking."

"Why?" Venomous dug his nails into the arms of the chair. "It's not like it's a problem."

"If it wasn't a problem, then you would have stopped," Arin said firmly. "I suppose I may be rushing things. Perhaps if we stretched the process out over a few more weeks…"

Venomous leaned forward, eyes narrowed. "I am perfectly capable of quitting," he hissed, his forked tongue lashing out like a whip.

Arin schooled her expression to one of polite skepticism.

Venomous grit his teeth, a faint growl escaping his throat.

"Fine!" he snapped. "Next week, you'll see. I won't drink a fucking drop of alcohol."

"Of course," she said, using the patronizing voice adults often affected with children.

"I will!" Venomous insisted. "I'll even bring those stupid fucking goals, too!"

"I'm sure you will," she reassured him. Her mother had taught kindergarten for years before she retired and Arin fancied herself a decent mimic. She had heard _all_ the voices, over the years.

Venomous ground his teeth, his face turning an alarming shade of red for someone so purple. "I'll show you," he hissed. He slammed the door to the office, storming out. "Come on, Fink! We're leaving!"

"But Boss-!"

The office door swung shut. Thirty seconds later, she heard the door to her practice slam shut as well – with truly rattling force, considering how well her office was soundproofed.

Only then did Arin allow herself to smile.

True to his word, Venomous arrived at their third session in a much neater state. His clothes were clean and pressed and his boots polished to a sheen. He had washed his hair, Arin could see. It was still sleek, but much less oily.

Fink scampered up onto her usual couch, casually knocking over the lamp and plugging her handheld game system in its place with a cackle.

"I'll, uh. I'll pay for that," Professor Venomous said, straightening his pristine lab coat.

"We'll discuss it after your session," Arin said, pinching the bridge of her nose with her left secondary.

They sat down in their usual armchairs, set at a companionable angle so that her more eye contact-averse patients could comfortably face forward and still see her in their periphery. Venomous didn't take advantage of the feature, instead choosing to stare down at his feet. He sat ramrod straight, his feet planted firmly on the floor.

"I believe I owe you an apology," he said.

Not an actual apology, she noted. She wondered whether he even realized it. Venomous struck her as the type of person who rarely apologized for anything, after all.

"Oh?" She tilted her head. Had the lamp bothered him so much?

"You were right." He grimaced and smoothed his hair back. "About the drinking. There wasn't any. Withdrawal. Or anything like that." He crossed his legs at the ankle; the smooth, almost dainty movement belied by the wrinkling of his pant legs which gave away how tightly his legs were pressed together.

"But, nonetheless, it feels... good. Being clearheaded again. Thank you for that." Despite his averted gaze, the words sounded sincere.

Arin acknowledged this with a gracious nod.

Venomous cleared his throat. "Besides, Fink already seems happier, so I must be doing something right, you know?"

Arin smiled faintly. "I'm very glad to hear that, Professor. Why don't we start with that for today. Tell me about Fink."

That got Venomous to look up, his body losing some of its tension from sheer surprise.

"You know, that was not what I expected you to ask about," he remarked.

"Oh? Would you rather we discussed your goals for therapy? I was under the impression-"

"No, no," he said, holding up his hands in a halting motion. "It's- We can talk about Fink. I just thought you'd..." he trailed off, tensing once more.

"We can talk about whatever you feel ready to talk about," Dr. Aarinsdottir said firmly. She was still desperately curious about Venomous's professed killing, but her instincts and training told her to wait him out.

"Fink, then," Venomous said. "Besides, she's part of my goals. I've been a pretty shitty boss to her lately. I want to be better."

"I would appreciate if you did not make value judgements regarding yourself," she said. "Rather than call yourself a 'shitty boss', reframe the thought in terms of behavior and feelings."

Venomous frowned. "Excuse me?"

"What about your behavior recently makes you a 'shitty boss'?"

Venomous looked faintly puzzled, but played along with a faint smile as he humored her. "Well, I've spent the past month on a bender and pretty much left her to fend for herself."

"And now you've stopped drinking and are actively seeking to improve your relationship with her."

"Well, yeah." Venomous burrowed into the back of the chair once more. "That's why I'm here. One of the reasons, anyway."

She waited.

"...Fine." He sighed, rolling his eyes. "I feel like I have been inadequate with meeting her needs as my minion. There. Are you happy?"

"It's a start. Now, tell me about Fink."

_Venomous skulked through damp passageways of the Neo Riot City sewage system as quietly as he could. It was rank and disconcertingly warm, but it was easier to travel the sewers if he wanted to avoid being seen. He was trying to stay off the radar, after all. He had lost muscle mass and gained some serpentine traits since leaving POINT, but it would be just his luck to be identified in spite of it._

_Maybe he could grow his hair out or something._

_He shoved the manhole cover out of the way as he made his ascent. If his calculations were correct, he should be near Pop & Poppop's Pizza Parlor, a joint frequented by members of organized crime._

_The restaurant wasn't even a front, just delicious._

_Nonetheless, he was sure he could drum up some business in the area, maybe trail some important figures for blackmail purposes..._

_That was when he heard a soft, squeaky little sigh._

_The rodent was curled up in an open trashcan, wearing a tattered dress and clutching a crudely made doll. He was well acquainted with lab rats and knew with absolute certainty that it (she, going by the dress) was far too thin._

_He scanned the alley. No sign of any other rodents or rodent-adjacents. Based on the rancid state of the food neighboring her, the rat had been languishing for days in the overflowing dumpster._

_"I wouldn't worry about it, if I were you."_

_Venomous turned, keeping his face in the shadows. A pimple-faced teenager in with a bulging trash bag and the restaurant's uniform squinted at him, then continued._

_"I've been here a while and it hasn't moved in days. I'm pretty sure it's dead. Trash day's tomorrow either way, so..."_

_The boy flung the trash bag in the neighboring dumpster._

_"I used to try to feed it, but it never touched the pizza. Stupid mouse... Anyway, see you!"_

_He trotted back inside, leaving Venomous alone with the rodent. She cracked open one eye, still a juvenile's blue, and let out a faint, pitiful squeak, one furry paw twitching towards him as if reaching for help._

_Venomous heard the sounds of patrons leaving the pizza parlor, chattering about plans for business expansion._

_He hesitated for just a moment._

_By the time they passed by the mouth of the alley, both the rodent and Venomous were gone._

"…and she's been serving me as my faithful minion ever since," Venomous finished.

"Quite the leap," Arin said. "One moment she was dying in a dumpster and the next she was… joining the forces of villainy?"

Venomous chuckled. "Oh, hardly. She wasn't even ready for solid foods when I first found her – I had to go out and buy formula. And don't even get me started on the potty training, the teething… ugh." Despite his disgusted tone, he was smiling. For the first time all session, he appeared truly relaxed in his seat, not trying to burrow into it or lean away; rather, he sat slightly slumped, the fingers of his hand tapping at the arm of the chair in a jaunty little rhythm.

"You were a father to her," Arin said, softly.

"Psh, no way." His brow furrowed in true distaste.

"So you view your relationship as purely professional?"

"I'm a terrible father," Venomous answered without answering.

"That's a value judgement."

Venomous leaned forward, his eyes boring into hers with an expression truly befitting his name. "My son inherited my powers. And you know how well _that_ went."

Dr. Aarinsdottir's eyebrows rose. "How would I-?" She stopped and her eyes went wide. Hadn't she made the connection weeks ago?

"The… incident two months ago. That was your son?"

Venomous leaned back, a defeated slump to his shoulders. "I fucked up. Worse than I ever had before. I- You won't understand."

"You seem certain of that."

"You won't understand _yet_ ," Venomous clarified begrudgingly.

"But I will, when you're ready to tell me." Arin allowed her confidence to seep into her tone like a stain into wood.

"We'll see."

That night, she sat in front of the piano, her sheet music a blank canvas before her. She would write something cheery, she decided. Maybe in F Major – C was overdone, after all, since it was all white keys. F wasn't much different, having only one flat to worry about. She played a few chords, tinkled out the first semblances of a melody. She wasn't quite sure where she planned to go with it yet, but she would find it.

For the next few weeks, progress was slow, but steady. Venomous offered little stories about Fink with increasing regularity, glimpses into his life with his not-child. She knew there were details he left out, stories that trailed off unfinished as his face fell into something somber and filled with longing.

"She hates everyone, really," Venomous said on one such occasion. "Except myself, of course. Though she did warm up to the bots eventually and even…"

His gaze went unfocused as he stared straight ahead, lips pressed together in a thin line.

"I think she misses him too," Venomous said finally, his voice barely a whisper.

They spent the rest of the session in silence.

Two months into therapy, Arin got her first glimpse into the tangled knot that was Venomous.

"Fink reminds me of Laser, sometimes," Venomous confided, a faint smile on his face. "She can be a bit of a bully. She'll make a fine villain one day, should she choose that path."

"Was your brother a bully?" Arin asked.

"Well, he was a brat, at least." Venomous snorted, smoothing his hair back. "When we were ten, I was prescribed reading glasses and he _never_ let it go. He teased me relentlessly for being a boring old man. So, when he started walking into walls, it was my turn to laugh all the way to the optometrist." Venomous's broad smile flickered on his face, then faded altogether. He twitched backwards, as if planning to wriggle back into the chair as he did when he wanted to hide, then seemed to catch himself. He arranged himself in a parody of his more relaxed posture, every muscle and tendon tightly controlled to maintain the façade.

"Tell me, Doctor. How much do you know about the powers so many of us are gifted with in this day and age?" He sounded distant, almost clinical.

"I know a fair amount," Arin said carefully. "But I don't have your expertise in biology. Please instruct me, Professor." She hoped the use of his title would put him somewhat at ease, even if he gave no sign of it.

"Most powers, as we know them, are actually a collection of traits," he began in what Arin could only assume was the tone he used to give lectures back when he taught night school. 

"Before I lost my powers, I was able to drain energy from surrounding sources as well as redirect the stored energy into myself or, as I later discovered, into my helmet. My brother was able to produce concentrated, high level radiation from his eyes and was able to turn it on and off at will. As these connected abilities are linked so intrinsically, most people consider a single collection of related abilities to be one single power. Lasers. Energy siphoning." He waved a hand dismissively.

"Much like snakes are immune to their own venom, most powered individuals are immune to their own powers as a matter of course – which is why, for instance, people with the ability to produce or control flame will not be burned by it."

He drew a slightly shaky breath, but continued on, tone unchanged. "I say 'most' powered individuals because there are exceptions – the most famous case being Medusa, who was not immune to her own reflected stare and was turned to stone by it. Fortunately, this is an extreme case. Of the unfortunate few who are not fully immune to their own powers, 99.9999% of these individuals have at least partial immunity – rather, a resistance. My brother and I both shared this partial resistance."

An interesting factoid, and one she had not known, but it was clear that he had some purpose behind his explanation. She waited for him to bring it to light.

Venomous was sitting rigidly in his chair, gaze focused on something distant.

"The cancer started in his eyes," Venomous said tonelessly, "and had long since spread its roots into his brain before we found it. From there it had spread to his spinal column, his lymph nodes..."

Venomous swallowed. "The same partial immunity that allowed him to use his powers over and over again was also his death sentence. Radiation therapy had no effect and chemo only made him sicker."

"Venomous…" Arin wasn't sure what to say and could only hope that the sound of her voice could bring him back from his painful memories to the present moment.

He blinked and turned his head, looking through her rather than at her, but it was a start.

"Every game of heroes we played, every bottle we shot for target practice, every annoying sibling prank… He was dying by inches."

"Venomous," she said softly, "You had no way of knowing and certainly no way of controlling when and how he used his powers. It wasn't your fault."

"Yes, I'm aware," Venomous said in that same neutral voice.

"It was… difficult," Venomous continued, an understatement if she'd ever heard one. "Our parents tried everything. Experimental medicines, special diets, aromatherapy, faith healing… And I watched as Laser grew sicker and sicker, no matter what they tried."

"That does sound difficult," Arin said.

"Not as difficult as it was for him, I'm sure."

Venomous took a moment to compose himself, before continuing. "By the end, he was barely more than a skeleton. Blind. Unable to eat. Unable to walk. We were living at the hospital by that point. We hadn't seen our own room in weeks. Our mother channeled her helplessness into hero work, trying to take her mind off of her dying child. Our father was the one who read to him, tried to coax him into eating food he could no longer digest, and shouted at doctors who came in with quiet suggestions about dignity and pain management."

"And you?" Arin tilted her head. "What did you do?"

"I just… watched. There was nothing else I could do. Mom and dad weren't even taking me to school anymore. All I could do was watch him waste away."

"You feel guilty," Arin said, "but logically, what else could you have done? Inaction is not murder-"

"Shut up," Venomous hissed, suddenly vicious. "Just shut up. You don't know _anything._ "

It was the first time she found herself genuinely frightened by him. His sudden rage, his body taut as a bowstring.

"Then explain it to me," she said, keeping her voice calm and level, not allowing herself to flinch away.

Venomous sat back down, ramrod straight, staring straight ahead.

"One day, the doctor came with bad news. It had spread to his lungs and esophagus. It was already hard at work in his intestines which was bad enough, but soon he wouldn't even be able to speak."

Venomous's lips twitched in a feeble attempt at a smile. "We weren't supposed to hear that, of course, but Laser had long ago recruited me to crack the door whenever the doctors spoke to our parents outside. It was habit by then."

Venomous folded his hands in his lap. "We also heard them fighting with the doctor. Saying they wouldn't let someone kill their son. How he was _strong_. He was going to _live_."

Arin could only imagine their desperation, their furious denial.

"When they came back in, Laser asked for dad to buy him a new comic book and read it to him. Not just any comic book – Pizza Turtles Rodeo. Volume 3, I believe."

"I've never heard of that one," Arin said, trying to add in a little levity to counteract the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"I would be amazed if you had. It wasn't real. But dear old mom and dad couldn't bear to disappoint their son. They left right away, determined to make it to the comic store before it closed."

Venomous swallowed.

"And so they left me alone with him."

The slow dread building in Arin's gut swelled to something nigh overwhelming.

"And he said… he said, **_Hey Drain-o, I've got an idea._** "

Arin realized suddenly that she didn't want to hear this, but she owed it to her patient to keep listening.

"He said, **_Why don't you put your powers to some real use?_** "

_Oh._

Venomous swallowed again, putting his hand to his lips for a moment before continuing. "He said, **_Souls are just another form of energy, right? What if you drained me?_** "

_Oh no._

" ** _We could share!_** he said. **_Wouldn't that be cool? The two of us against the world!_** "

Venomous blinked rapidly, his jaw clenched tight as he breathed raggedly through his nose.

"I told him that I wasn't sure, that we should wait until our parents got back. He started to cry."

" ** _Why won't you just do this for me?! Do you hate me that much? I can't read, I can't go outside… They won't even let me go to the bathroom anymore!_** "

"I told him we should wait."

" ** _We won't get another chance, Trevor! They're going to leave me to rot in here! I just want to feel the air on my face again, to run and play. We'd always be together, then. It'll be so much fun! I bet we could have some real fun with those powers of yours! You're always so soft._** "

 _Please_ , she found herself praying. _Please no_.

"I told him I was scared. And he said **_Stop being a baby and do it! Do it now or I'll never, ever forgive you._** "

Venomous smiled, the expression more a grim rictus of agony than one of joy. "And so I-" His voice broke for just a moment. "And so I did."

Arin felt ill.

He swallowed twice before he could speak again. "It… It didn't take long. I only had to…" He lifted his hands to about chest height, arms outstretched, fingers curved like they were cupping someone's shoulders. She wondered if he could still see his brother, even now.

Venomous wrapped his arms around himself and squeezed. "His skin was so frail. Like notebook paper that had been thumbed through hundreds of times. I half expected it to tear beneath my fingers."

Arin closed her eyes for just a moment, as if upon opening them she would find herself waking up from a nightmare in her own bed. She opened her eyes to her office, to the villain holding onto himself like he'd fly apart at the seams should he let go.

"I wanted so badly to believe that I'd succeeded," Venomous whispered, silent tears trickling down his face. "I convinced myself that I pulled _something_ from him. That I didn't- That he wasn't _gone_."

His face crumbled as gut wrenching sobs escaped him, his body bending like a bow being strung from the force of them.

Arin, as a general rule, did not touch her patients, but it was difficult to keep herself from reaching out. Instead she retrieved the weighted blanket she kept in her office for some of her more anxious patients and draped it around him.

Their session went on long past their usual hour, filled only with Venomous's sobs.


	4. Development

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The POINT years.

Arin did not give out her personal number to just anyone, but she was at a loss for what else to do. Venomous gave little indication of being a danger to himself, but he was clearly still in crisis. She had discreetly passed her number to Fink and, though perhaps it was a bit unethical, she did not regret it.

She sipped her sparkling grape juice, sitting in front of the piano once more. She wanted to play something happy, to perhaps work on her Sonata in F, but... The melody, no matter how cheery it started, seemed to drift to something slow and sad.

That was the thing with choosing a key, she thought - every major had a minor built in. Where major started at "Do" on the singing scale, the minor began at "La". C Major was A minor, G Major was E minor, et cetera.

She stared at the key signature for the work in front of her, then up at the title. In one swift, decisive movement, she crossed out the letter F. Sonata in D, she decided. Yes, that felt right.

"I think something broke inside me, that day," Venomous said - the first words he'd spoken all session.

Arin considered asking him to elaborate, but she knew the day he was talking about.

"I remember closing my eyes, my hands still on his shoulders, holding him... and the next, my parents were there, holding his body and sobbing while I sat in the plastic chair off to the side."

He sounded so distant.

"It happened a lot in the beginning. I would just... go away. Sometimes I'd come back to find I'd moved, sometimes the world had moved around me. Blink, it's my first day at middle school. Blink, my father is drinking again. Blink, my parents are talking about me in loud whispers when I'm supposed to be asleep."

That sounded like some powerful dissociation, she mused. Or perhaps memory loss from the grief and depression.

"It wasn't that," Venomous said upon her tactful suggestion. "I don't remember those- those blank spots, but I remember coming back. I remember becoming suddenly aware again, having to piece together where I was, what I was doing. It was like coming off of autopilot."

Venomous chuckled. "Perhaps it should have bothered me more, but I-" he cut himself off and bowed his head. "I was... irrational."

"For not being concerned?"

"No, for encouraging it."

Arin blinked. "Grief does strange things to people," she said. It wasn't the most encouraging statement, but it was all she had.

"You don't understand. This wasn't grief, it was _hope._ "

Dr. Aarinsdottir stared, trying to piece together his reasoning. "Please explain," she said finally.

Venomous sighed, leaning back in his chair. "I... don't laugh, but... I'd hoped it was a sign that, on some level, I succeeded. That he was still..."

Arin closed her eyes. "Venomous..."

"Please, just- Don't say it. I _know._ I was twelve and my twin was dead and I was the one who- who-" he swallowed and blinked rapidly, fighting off tears.

"Damn it," he hissed, "I thought I was past this!"

"Recovery isn't linear, Venomous," she said. "You were put in an impossible position. It's understandable that you'd still feel upset or even angry. It's human."

"I'm not," Venomous said. He slouched further in his chair. "Don't get me wrong – I resent the hell out of being the one to do it. If mom and dad could have seen past their own grief long enough to ask Laser what _he_ wanted…" He trailed off, shaking his head. "Well, it doesn't matter now."

"You resent your parents, but not your brother?" Arin couldn't help but ask.

"Of course not. What the hell _else_ was he supposed to do? We were _twelve_ , it's not like he could override mom and dad." Venomous wrapped his arms around his stomach. He had a habit of seeking pressure or constriction when he was upset. Were she not afraid of disrupting the flow of his thoughts, she would have retrieved the weighted blanket for him once more.

"What," Venomous continued, "Was he supposed to catch a nurse when mom and dad were asleep next to him and convince them to smother him with a Cob damn pillow? Maybe talk the doctors into giving him a morphine overdose?"

"I see your point," Arin said. He appeared to be working himself up to irritation, which wasn't constructive right now. She hoped by keeping her voice soft and level that he would calm down.

Her tactic worked.

"Sorrey," he muttered. He stood and walked to the far end of the room where he began to pace.

Arin had gone to the zoo and seen a Greater Cloud Tiger once. It had been close to feeding time, and she still remembered the tightly coiled tension in the beast as it paced the edge of its enclosure. Watching Venomous, she got much the same feeling. A predator, trapped. Or, perhaps, a wild animal reining in more violent instincts.

"I don't. Blame him." He had resorted to those bitten-off sentences again. "I- Before, maybe. Occasionally. Not anymore. Not after I felt-" he stopped, both his words and his pacing.

"I went through something similar," he whispered. "But mine was by choice. My own stupid, selfish-"

"Professor Venomous." She didn't need to stay anything more – just the name was enough for his shoulders to slump, for him to trudge back to seat.

"My parents blamed me, I told you that months ago."

She nodded.

"I didn't stay with them long after that." Venomous sagged further forwards, like a wilted plant. "My father wouldn't even look at me anymore unless it was through the glass bottom of a beer bottle. My mother was afraid of me, I think." He must have caught her look because he rolled his eyes. "No, she didn't _say_ as much, but she flinched back from my touch, sometimes. She cowered when I closed books too loudly, let alone when I slammed doors. So, I just… left."

He leaned back. "I ran off to join POINT Academy. I think they're called POINT Prep now, but before it became a hiring ground for heroes, it was just a school of heroism funded by POINT. There were only two heroes on the team then, with a handful of handlers, support positions, that sort of thing. I ended up in their first graduating class, handpicked to make their duo a trio."

"Something tells me it wasn't quite so simple," Arin said dryly.

"No shit," Venomous said, favoring her with a lopsided grin. "Cob, looking back at it now, I was so fucked up."

Venomous buried his face in his hands for a moment. "I used my dead brother's name – Laserblast – as my alias. I invented a helmet to shoot non-radiation based lasers to justify it. I honest to Cob concealed my real powers for the first two years of school." He chuckled, but the sound was without real humor.

"It came out eventually, at least among the teachers. But, I was able to play it off as wanting an ace up my sleeve. Acted like each teacher to figure it out was the only one. Made them feel _special. Trusted._ They all bought it and happily kept it to themselves. It certainly wasn't the worst thing a student had ever done, I'm sure."

"Why hide your powers? Why go to all that effort?" Arin asked.

"Yeah, that's where it gets… messed up." He smoothed back his hair. "I already told you about my hope – my delusion, really – that I had managed to save some of my brother's soul inside me?"

She nodded.

"I thought- Cob. I thought if I made myself like him, like the hero he wanted to be, that maybe he'd… come out more? Reveal himself to me?" He ground the heels of his palms against his eyes. "Cob, I was such an idiot."

"You were a deeply traumatized child still reeling from the death of your brother and loss of your family. That's not the same thing."

"You just won't let up on that, will you." It was not a question.

Arin smiled and shook her head.

Venomous let out a faintly amused huff. "Fine, then."

"Did you enjoy your time at POINT Academy?" Dr. Aarinsdottir asked.

"I liked learning," Venomous admitted. "I studied biology and education in addition to hero studies."

He smoothed his hair back with a rueful grin. "I kept expecting to get caught, so I wanted to have a backup plan in place. Teaching seemed simple enough, I thought." He rolled his eyes, "Of course, I'd never had to prepare lectures and grade essays before, so..."

Arin chuckled. Venomous seemed to relax slightly at that. She could suddenly envision him in a classroom, telling a lightly self-deprecating joke to win over his students.

"Why did you feel you needed a backup plan?" Arin asked, "Why not commit to heroism?"

Venomous grimaced. "I was so sure POINT would figure me out."

"Figure what out?"

"That I wasn't hero material? That I was unstable? That I killed my brother?"

"That was an act of mercy, and one taken reluctantly, at that," Arin said firmly. "As for instability... there is nothing wrong with seeking help."

"Spoken like a true psychiatrist," Venomous muttered. He cleared his throat at her Look. "You didn't say anything about my first point."

"I thought it went without saying that everyone is 'hero material' in their own way."

"Oh please, don't be ridiculous," Venomous scoffed, rolling his eyes hard enough that Arin was a little worried he'd pull something.

"You're Fink's hero."

"That's not- I'm her boss!"

"-who rescued her, nursed her back to health-"

"It's a free minion! It was completely, 100% selfish!" Venomous insisted, tugging at the collar of his turtleneck like he was suddenly too warm.

"Of course," she said in her condescending teacher voice. "We were talking about POINT Academy."

Venomous scowled, but allowed the transition.

"I only got in because I was a legacy," Venomous said. "Mom was a professional hero, after all, even if she wasn't associated with POINT. I heard the proctors whispering about grading me easier," he added, cutting her off before she could do more than open her mouth.

"I studied my ass off, though, to try and keep up. It sounds strange, but when I studied, I hardly ever lost time - to the point where I honestly felt guilty."

Venomous had a warped sense of fairness, that was clear - particularly when coupled with his hard-earned loyalty.

Arin was under no illusions that he wouldn't shove her into the path of a bus if it suited him, but select individuals - his brother, his minion, the mysterious "he" Venomous occasionally alluded to - held special consideration in his eyes.

"You were still under the impression that you brother was taking over during those blank spots?" She asked carefully.

"I vacillated between certainty that he was there and certainty that I was merely sleepwalking." He bowed his head. "It was only recently that it was possible neither was correct."

 _Well,_ she thought, _that's... ominous._

"But studying kept you in the present moment?"

"Yeah, I- I don't think he had much patience for research."

"Who?"

"Shadowy Figure. My... alternate personality, I suppose is the technical term."

"Alternate personality?" She kept all traces of doubt from her voice. Multiple Personality Disorder, now called Dissociative Identity Disorder, was not nearly as common as the media alleged, but it wasn't unheard of. She wondered if Venomous had found out about her own powers, if he'd chosen her for a more specific reason.

"Do you know when this personality manifested?"

Venomous shook his head. "Honest to Cob, I didn't know he existed! I had less blank spots after I graduated, so I assumed it was just grief. It wasn't until Fink and KO..."

He cut himself off again. "I'm getting ahead of myself."

"POINT Academy."

"Yeah. That shit show." Venomous sighed. "It was a blur of studying and working out and way too little sleep. I'd hide in the library stacks until after closing and study all night, then go to class in the morning. Cob, sometimes I'd pass out from exhaustion, but I was able to pass it off as 'oh, I stayed up late working on an essay' or 'oh, I skipped breakfast, must be low blood sugar' or some other excuse."

"This didn't raise any flags?"

"Of course not! The superhero scene is not nearly as wholesome as it appears to the public. I was _praised_ for it. 'There's a boy with real dedication,' my teachers said. 'Learn from Laserblast's example.' Of course, that only made me feel more like an impostor."

"What about your friends?" _Surely one of them noticed..._

"In between my GED, double major, and hero training, how the hell was I supposed to have friends? Don't get me wrong, I was friendly enough not to seem 'off', but I was years younger than everyone in my classes. Heck, no one even knew my civvie name. I was Laserblast full time."

Between the death of his brother, his extreme workload, parental abandonment, the dissociation... Not to mention faking different powers and living under his dead brother's alias...

 _Cob, how had he managed to function at_ all?

"It sucked, sure, but hey, I got a membership with POINT out of it. I mean, that was what I was working my ass off to achieve in the first place." He fussed with the lapels of his coat, almost like a preening bird.

"Did you enjoy your time at POINT?"

Venomous smiled, a bright, cheesy sort of grin. Laserblast's grin, she realized.

"What's not to like?"

Arin forwent the grape juice, that night. She hadn't made nearly as much progress on her sonata as she had hoped. She wavered between major and minor constantly.

Rather like Venomous, she thought. He was not a good man, certainly. He delighted in destruction and villainy, but he had his own peculiar moral code - though she still couldn't grasp it completely.

Just like the song, he seemed torn between opposites. Himself and his brother. Laserblast and Professor Venomous. Venomous and this... Shadowy Figure, though the professor hadn't elaborated further on his assertion.

She had a feeling his importance would become clear sooner rather than later.

"You were evasive last week," Dr. Aarinsdottir said. After all, it wasn't something she could let slide.

"Hm?" Venomous's face was suspiciously neutral. "Whatever are you talking about?"

His innocent act was less than convincing, but Arin decided to humor him.

"I asked if you enjoyed being a hero at POINT."

"Ah." Venomous crossed his legs, then uncrossed them once more. "That."

He did not elaborate further.

" _Did_ you enjoy being a hero?" She asked again after a protracted silence.

Venomous fidgeted, straightening the sleeves of his lab coat. "It... it was fine," he said finally.

Arin beckoned him to continue.

"I liked the praise. And the fighting."

"What didn't you like?" Dr. Aarinsdottir asked, reading between the lines.

"Ugh... pretty much anything else."

He pushed his hair back, puffing out his cheeks and blowing out a short gust of air. "Cob, I'd never realized how little heroing was actually involved in hero work. Etiquette, public relations, press releases... All those rules and regulations… It was all so dull! I had never even wanted to be a hero in the first place!"

He seemed to startle himself with the fervor of his last statement. "Sorrey," he muttered.

"If you didn't want to be a hero, why did you choose to stay?" Arin couldn't resist asking. Laserblast had been an active POINT member for years, after all.

"I had hoped- Cob, this sounds so stu-" he cut himself off. "I still hoped he was in there, somewhere. Inside me. That if I was good enough, he would-"

He sighed. "I know, stupid is a value judgement. I just _feel_ stupid, looking back. I spent years being miserable for nothing."

"It isn't nothing. Leaving aside the people you helped-" Arin ignored Venomous's scoff- "You gained valuable experience that, I imagine, assisted you once you... found your calling."

"I suppose." Venomous relaxed slightly. "A lot of information that I'd learned as a hero became invaluable as a villain."

 _Wonderful,_ Arin thought dryly.

"Did your parents make any moves towards reconciliation, once you became a professional hero?"

"They died the week before I graduated, so that'd be a hard no."

"That must have been difficult," Arin said, already scrapping any ideas she had about encouraging Venomous to patch things up with his family.

"From what I'd read, my father had been driving mom home from the hospital when he hit a tree. Apparently he had a _very_ impressive blood alcohol content."

"Read?"

Venomous smiled thinly. It didn't reach his eyes. "Yes, well... I can only surmise that I wasn't included in the will. I only found out because I looked them up, worried they would find out about graduation and try to attend."

Venomous's smile broadened, dark and bitter. "I had been having nightmares about them showing up and telling POINT what I did – getting me kicked out, or even thrown into jail. When I stumbled across the article about their deaths, I was actually relieved."

He smirked at her. "And that, if anything, should have told me that I wasn't meant for heroism. Hindsight..."

"No one contacted you?"

"How would they? My parents hadn't acknowledged me in years. Cob, they weren't even paying for my schooling – I was in on a scholarship. I had to play it off as wanting to become a hero all on my own."

Venomous tapped his chin. "I doubt anyone close to them even knew I existed, actually. We'd moved around quite a bit after Laser's death. I imagine they kept that up after I ran away."

"But you don't know," Arin said.

"I suppose not."

Silence reigned for a moment.

Arin eyed the clock thoughtfully. Their session was nearly over.

"Tell me a happy memory," she said abruptly. She wanted to end their session on a positive note.

"Hmm..." Venomous said. A faint smile curled on his lips, his eyes softening slightly. Clearly, he had something in mind.

"Have I ever told you about the first time I met Boxy in person?"

"Boxy?" Arin smiled at the silly name, though she supposed she had no room for judgement.

"Lord Boxman " Venomous said. "He's my-" he caught himself, sorrow flickering on his face for just a moment. "He was my partner."

Venomous visibly shook off his gloom, forcing a smile onto his face, bittersweet as it was.

"I first heard about him from Billiam – some networking thing I've already forgotten about. He was a member of the Board of Directors for Boxmore and was hoping to drum up more business." Venomous tapped his black painted nails against the arm of the chair. "I was, well… curious. Not much, of course. I was already level negative seven and had plenty of clients of my own for my… concoctions." He smiled, baring his teeth in a way that was equal parts friendly and menacing.

"Nonetheless, he stuck out to me. He's level negative _ten,_ you know," Venomous bragged. "To rank that high – well, low – a villain would have to be either _truly_ evil or at least very experienced."

Arin made suitably impressed sounds.

"We exchanged a few emails, made a few phone calls… I even ordered a few bots. Which he did not deliver." Venomous rolled his eyes, still smiling.

"I gave him more than enough time to complete my order, but when the shipment never came in, I decided it would be best to terminate our business relationship. I requested a face to face meeting and he turned it into a dinner."

"Oh?"

"He's impulsive that way," Venomous said fondly. "Cob, it drove me insane, but I loved it." He seemed to catch himself. He cleared his throat and composed himself to a more neutral expression, a faint, lilac blush dusting his cheeks.

"Did the dinner at least go well?" Arin asked. She honestly hadn't been sure the man could blush.

"Oh, it was horrible," Venomous confided with relish. "He welcomed me in with a hug and had a spat with my minion over who would take my coat - which Fink won, by the way."

Arin allowed her amusement to show on her face. "Well that sounds eventful."

"Oh, it got worse," Venomous said gleefully. "The food was _awful._ I'm not sure if he just had terrible luck or if the Boxman family superstition has some truth to it, but the ham he'd made was little more than black powder by the time he tried to serve it to us."

"What superstition?"

"That the better the food looks, the worse it will taste. Box goes to huge amounts of effort to make his food look as hideous as possible - it does taste surprisingly good, if you close your eyes. Apparently they exchange techniques at family reunions."

Venomous let out a faintly nasal chuckle. "They compete over who cooks the 'best' – and I can't wait to attend and-" he cut himself off, face falling. "Well, that's unlikely to happen now."

Arin opened her mouth to offer consolation, but Venomous ploughed ahead with his story.

"Anyway, the food was awful and he kept running off, clearly distracted." Venomous smiled once more. "It wasn't until dessert that I found out he'd captured not one, but _three_ heroes. And, over the course of dinner they'd escaped."

"How unfortunate," Arin said. It was what her father called a white lie – she did not think that heroes escaping villains and disrupting dinner in the process to be a bad thing. Not that she would ever say as much, of course.

"Boxman tore apart his own robots with his bare hands and built a pie cannon right there on the spot, trapping the heroes with the same coconut cream pies they'd been attacking us with. He even allowed me to deal the final sugary blow, sending them flying off into the night."

Venomous rested his chin on his palm, staring dreamily into the distance.

"It was incredible. Also, it was the first time I met my son, though I wasn't sure at the time. Not really, anyway."

 _Of course he drops a bombshell like that at the end of session,_ she thought. _I'm starting to think he does it on purpose._

Arin started over once more. Her sonata just... wasn't coming together like she had hoped. Her grape juice remained untouched.

"Major or minor... why can't I just pick one?" She knocked her head against the piano lid in frustration.

Maybe she should take a break, just hammer on the keys and get out her frustration. She closed her eyes, took three slow, deep breaths... and played.

She used all four hands, playing mindlessly until she found a melody, almost by accident. A cheery little tune played in major, followed by a lower minor repetition. Faster and faster, the tune went - Major, minor, Major, minor - alternating until at last the two melodies overlaid one another, like something on a harpsichord, almost baroque.

Sometimes, a thing isn't only one way or another. Heroes could be bad, villains could be good. Major and minor were both ways of playing the same keys, after all.

"Well?" Venomous said as he settled into his chair with an almost feline air of smugness.

He seemed to be under the impression that Arin didn't recognize his mention of his son for what it truly was - a bright, shiny lure.

Dr. Aarinsdottir knew it meant she was getting closer to something distressing to him - an unfortunate necessity if she planned to help him work through his problems.

"You were telling me about POINT," she reminded him.

"Ah, yes," he said, disgruntled. "POINT."

Arin did not allow herself to smile.

"What else do you want to know?" he asked.

"Tell me about your teammates. Did you get along?"

Venomous sighed. "Well, at first it was just Foxtail and Dr. Greyman. It wasn't _terrible_ , I suppose." He leaned back in the chair. "I respected Foxtail's leadership skills, but as a person she was too noisy for me – and always so physical."

"What do you mean?"

"She spoke like she had no volume control. Her presence was not good for my headaches, to put it lightly. She also was big on hugs and patting people on the back – which would have been fine except she had super strength and overestimated how durable I was."

Venomous made a show of wincing and rubbing his shoulder by way of demonstration.

"And of course, I couldn't ask her to be more gentle. Laserblast would never."

"Laserblast as in the hero you aspired to be? Or Laserblast as in your brother?"

"Bold of you to assume they weren't one and the same." The bitterness in his tone was palpable.

Dr. Aarinsdottir only allowed him to stew in silence for a minute or two.

"What about Dr. Greyman?" Arin remembered looking up to him as a child – even pre-POINT. There was still prejudice against adjacents, especially less 'cute' adjacents like herself. She'd admired him for being small and visibly nonhuman while still being a popular, accomplished hero.

"Greyman was okay. Smart, but very... white hat about it. Everything was theoretical and Cob forbid you get him started on ethics. I swear, that man could find ethical concerns in everything."

Hmm... somehow, knowing Venomous had defected to the villain lifestyle, she found it hard to believe that Dr. Greyman was as obsessed with morality as Venomous seemed to think he was.

"He at least got Foxtail to tone things down, sometimes. If she'd had her way, we would have been training during all our downtime. He insisted that we exercise our minds as well. I appreciated the break, not that I ever admitted it."

"Why not?"

"Because that would have implied a break was needed."

"Wasn't it?"

"That's beside the point."

Arin fought the urge to roll her eyes. "What about your later teammates? Rippy Roo, El-Bow, Silverspark..."

Professor Venomous brightened immediately. "Oh, Rippy was definitely my favorite. She had a brilliant mind for linguistics and an incredible grasp of quantum physics. Honestly, I would have considered asking her out had the entire _world_ not been convinced I belonged with Sparks. We were probably better as friends anyway." Venomous grinned ruefully. "As it is, she's probably the teammate I miss most. I even thought about letting her know I was alive, but..." he shrugged.

Interesting how his onetime girlfriend ranked lower than a platonic friend. From what the movies and books told her, this was not typically the case.

"I barely knew El-Bow. We worked out together sometimes. He wasn't so bad once he got into it and stopped making nervous conversation. The eye candy wasn't bad either, even if he wasn't my type."

Arin wasn't sure what that type was, considering it apparently contained Rippy Roo, Silverspark, and Lord Boxman - an avian-adjacent shaped roughly like a bowling ball. Still, it wasn't relevant, so she dismissed the thought easily.

"And what of Silverspark?"

Venomous grimaced, raking his fingers through his hair. "That's... complicated."

Arin beckoned him to continue.

"Honestly? I thought we were friends. I just liked how she admired me, at first, but she grew on me. And then one day I woke up from another blank spot and we were kissing."

"More dissociative episodes?" Arin thought he had mentioned them lessening, but she supposed he never said they went away completely.

"Yes, well... between the new recruits and my research into glorbs, they'd gotten more frequent."

"What research?" Arin wasn't sure if this was the correct path, but the downturn of Venomous's lips told her there was something in it to explore.

"Just trying to get stronger," Venomous said, shrugging with feigned nonchalance.

"Why? Laserblast was level 8 – a formidable rank back when the POW scale was still new."

Venomous scowled. "It wasn't working! The whole point of being a hero was to wake him up, but all I got was more headaches and blank spots. I thought- maybe if I got stronger, he'd get stronger too. I didn't know I was feeding someone else."

That had to be a reference to Shadowy Figure, she was sure of it. Arin wondered if she would need to use her powers on Venomous to get to the root of this tangled knot of a man. She hoped not – that was the sort of thing that she could lose her license over.

"How often were these blank spots occurring?"

"I don't know. They came in spurts." Venomous shrugged. "More often after Sparks joined. Honestly, it was starting become a real problem."

 _Only just starting?_ she thought incredulously. "How do you mean?" she asked in a level voice.

"It started happening almost daily. Cob, multiple times a day even! I had no idea what I was doing half the time." He stared into the distance, drumming his fingers against the arm of the chair, faster and faster. "I remember asking Sparks about her powers, only for her to give me a strange look and tell me I'd asked the same thing an hour ago. I remember waking up in the middle of battle and scrambling to figure out what I was doing. I even-"

He cut himself off, staring into the distance. "I know what it looked like. Me and Sparks. I saw the footage. But I wasn't _there_. But I couldn't just ask, not without telling them- I was so afraid-" his voice cracked.

He closed his eyes, slowing his breathing the way she'd taught him for their progressive relaxation exercises.

"I was afraid they'd find out. That they'd know. That I'd be sent away, or worse." Venomous bowed his head. "My whole life was built on lies and I couldn't see any way out but to keep going."


	5. Recapitulation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Venomous makes a mistake and things get a little crazy.

The text came on Sunday at 3:12 in the afternoon.

_i fuckd up pls help i fcked up_

Arin Aarinsdottir read it, heart sinking. There was no name associated to it, but she already knew who it was from. She pressed call, her heartrate gaining speed with each ring.

The call connected on the fifth.

"Hello?" The answering voice was higher, scratchier than Venomous's. Arin hesitated.

"Is- Is Professor Venomous there?"

"He's in the bathroom right now," the woman said. "Who are you?"

"He sent a message to me. I am concerned." Arin hoped that the non-answer would be enough to get the information she needed.

"You and me both," the woman muttered. "He just freaked out for no reason."

Arin's heart raced. "Where is he? What address?"

"Uh, I don't know that I feel comfortable giving out my address," the woman said, skepticism and uncertainty warring in her voice.

"Please," Arin urged, "he needs help."  
The woman sighed, but relented.

Arin grabbed her car keys and was out the door before she even finished speaking.

The address in question was for a small house constructed of colorful slabs of metal. It was a modest home, with a few patches of flowers and a bicycle out front. The charming sort of place one could expect to see in a coming of age film.

Arin parked a little haphazardly, scrambling out of the car. She snagged the weighted blanket with her right hands, tucking it under her elbows securely. Perhaps it looked a bit silly, but if Venomous was having a crisis of some sort, she wanted to offer what little comfort she could.

She knocked on the door thrice, restraining herself from hammering on the thing the way she wanted to. She was rather protective of her patients and had made far too much progress with Venomous over the past months to let him do something… rash.

A woman answered the door.

"Uh, hey there. I'm Carol," she said with an awkward waggle of her fingers. From her voice, it was obvious this was the woman from the phone. 

Arin fought the urge to push past her.

"Yes, hello. I'm Dr. Arin Aarinsdottir. I need to see Professor Venomous, please." It was a little brusque, but every inch of her from her antennae to her chitinous toes was urging her to check on her patient.

"Doctor?" Carol asked. "Is he sick?"

"Not that kind of doctor." She squeezed past the woman, tucking her arms close.

"He's in the bathroom," Carol said, tugging on a lock of blond hair. "Here, I'll show you-"

Arin studied her as the woman led her down the hall. She was curvy, wearing sweatpants and a POINT shirt that were well-worn, but clean. A woman on her day off, Arin decided, rather than one who regularly worked from home. She had strong arms and legs, and a solidly built core. 'Child-bearing hips' his father would say – at least, that was how he teased his wife. Arin's mother had always laughed raucously in response, but Arin learned the hard way that this was not the most flattering descriptor.

Carol stopped outside of one door and knocked. "Hey, Ven? A nice lady is here to see you." She flashed a nervous smile at Arin over her shoulder. Carol had a gap in her front teeth that was oddly familiar.

"Sorrey, he's been in there a really long time," Carol said, biting her lower lip. "I don't know what happened."

"Did he say something?" Arin asked.

Carol fidgeted, her cheeks reddening. "Well, I mean… we were talking about, um, our history. He had questions about KO, his biological son."

"You're Silverspark," Arin blurted in realization.

"He- he talked to you about-?! Wait, are you his therapist or something?"

"I can't answer that," Arin said, wincing at her own words – the non-answer very clearly a confirmation.

"He did mention his therapy," Carol said. "That's why I let him in. He said he was trying to figure things out and, well, I can't begrudge him that."

Considering that Venomous had abandoned her and faked his own death, Arin thought she was particularly generous.

"Do you know what set him off?" Dr. Aarinsdottir asked, testing the knob to the door, unsurprised to find it locked.

"Well, he'd asked some, heh… some weird questions about us." Carol blushed. "About things he might have said when we were, er, together. He said he couldn't remember anything."

"Were you able to jog his memory?"

"Well he definitely had some sort of reaction when I said his name." Carol gestured to the bathroom door in demonstration.

"Which name? He has rather a lot of them, as I recall."

Carol snorted ungracefully, sending her a commiserating look. "Oh, don't I know it! But I called him by his civvie name. You know, Lawrence."

_Oh my Cob._

"Can you force the door?" Arin asked. Something in her expression must have changed, because Carol's face paled in response. She cracked her knuckles.

"Yeah, step back."

Venomous was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet when the now broken door to the bathroom swung open. His arms were wrapped tightly around his knees. He had no reaction to the sound of the door breaking or either of them entering.

"Hey, Ven? Ven?" Carol waved a hand in front of his face. Venomous blinked, but showed no recognition.

"I apologize, but if you could give us some privacy? I'll try to bring him out of it."

"O-okay…" Carol's gaze darted between the two of them warily, but she acquiesced, making her way back down the hall.

Once she was out of sight, Arin draped the blanket over Venomous's shoulders.

"Professor Venomous, can you hear me?" she asked. There was no reaction. He was dissociating hard, she could tell. There was no sign of any alternate personality to fill the void. Normally, she would try to bring him out of it with words, but she suspected words were beyond him right now.

Arin did not use her powers lightly. Her touch-based telepathy worked best when the other party sincerely wanted to communicate. She had used it once on a badly injured abuse victim incapable of speech and sparingly on a nonverbal patient with severe generalized anxiety.

Slipping into Venomous's mind was easy, alarmingly so.

She usually visualized minds like houses. It helped if someone opened a door, but she could probably force her way in if the situation was life or death. Venomous's 'house' was like a crime scene. The door hung open, splintered near the lock. There was no surrounding grass or rock, just empty blackness. She traversed the space, gliding in a dreamlike way.

She forced her physical form to breathe before reaching out to touch the door.

 _Sparks crossed her arms defensively. "I don't know,_ Lawrence, _what do I know?"_

_He opened his mouth to say, "That's not my name," but what came out was, "Where did you hear that name?"_

_"You! You_ told _it to me! Lawrence, after your mother right? But you asked me to call you Laser, instead. Don't you remember?"_

 _That's not my name. That's not- That's_ his _name, but he would never- He wouldn't-!_

Arin let go of the door. That was the inciting incident, but it was clear she needed to go deeper than that.

Inside, the scene changed. This was not unusual, in the mind. Geometry got very abstract. While the outside was wooden, inside Venomous's mind was all gleaming steel and tile. Almost industrial, she thought. She glided further into the room, taking in carefully cultivated bonsais and pristine, modern furniture.

At least, so it appeared at first.

There were signs of other influence. Colorful drawings taped up on an otherwise empty fridge. Faint strains of chiptune music coming from nowhere in particular. An overstuffed, battered couch tucked away in a corner. There were pictures of Venomous plastered all along the back wall, covering it nearly like wallpaper.

Something about it felt wrong.

It was tempting to touch the little influences – these outside things that mattered to Venomous so much that they were preserved in his mind with painstaking detail – but she wasn't here for the happy memories. She was here to find Professor Venomous and pull him to the surface once more. She approached the back wall to study the pictures further.

Compared to the neat way Venomous's mind was organized, this haphazard display was jarring, even more so when viewed up close. The photos overlapped in places, some crooked, some blurry. They reminded Arin of a detective's corkboard. All it was missing was a few thumbtacks and some string.

She removed one of the photos.

_Purple splotches climbing up his skin, reminding him of the way Laser's skin turned grey near the end._

_He stared into the mirror, wondering what he had done._

She dropped the photo, breath catching in her throat. He had mentioned experimenting on himself, she knew that much. Though, clearly, there was more trauma to be explored there. She wondered if the photos were Venomous's attempts to accept himself or-

She stopped.

Beneath the photo was something pitch black, a faint purple sheen coming off of it. She plucked off another photo.

_His muscles were gone now. Sure, he'd stopped working out, but they shouldn't be wasting so fast, should they? It would serve him right if his own experiment was poisoning him, just like Laser's powers had. It would be fitting._

There was black beneath that photo, as well. She used it to nudge aside the other pictures, just to confirm. The entire back wall was that same ominous black.

His entire sense of self as an individual, as Professor Venomous, seemed to be built into this wall of blackness. Self-loathing? Evil?

Or merely a divider?

Arin placed a hand against the wall-

_He woke up, muscles feeling a little stiff._

_"Damn, was I in a fight yesterday?" he muttered, raking his fingers through his hair._

_He heard a cheery laugh and swallowed down a scream._

_"S-Sparks?!"_

_She smiled, still brushing her long, blonde hair. "Mornin' Laser!" She leaned down to press a kiss to his cheek. She was naked, and he tried to avoid looking at her breasts. "Mwah! And quit playing around. That was no fight and you know it." Her smile faded slowly to something more vulnerable._

_"Unless… I wasn't_ that _bad, was I?"_

_"No, no! You were great!" he reassured her frantically. "You know me, useless before my coffee."_

_The last thing he remembered was breakfast. Cob, had he lost an entire day? Had he had sex?_

_"You- you mean that?" Sparks brightened. "Er, not about the coffee – I know that part." She winked._

_"Yup. Best night of my life," he lied._

_She wrapped her arms around him. "Aww… me too!"_

_"I understand wanting an ace up your sleeve," his teacher said, tugging at the sleeves to his wizarding robe. A pigeon flew out from it. Had he not been so Cob damn tired, Laserblast would have applauded. Wally liked applause._

_He allowed his jaw to slacken and a faint "ooh" to escape him – not his most convincing act, but he bought it anyway._

_"I'll keep your secret, boy," Wally said, casually zapping the pigeon out of existence, "but if word of your power ever does get out? I never had any idea."_

_Laser was so thin, his skin grey and stretched tight over his bones, his eyes covered by the overgrown fringe of his hair._

_Trevor swallowed back his own tears. It seemed wrong to be crying when he wasn't the one who was sick._

**_Stop being a baby and do it! Do it now or I'll never, ever forgive you._ **

_Trevor reached out his hands as Laser smiled._

**_Do it!_ **

_He never said anything else._

Arin's arm was encased in the wall. As she suspected, it was less tangible than it had first appeared. At least she'd found a point of entry. She focused, mustered all the power inside her, and slowly pushed through to the other side.

And there, she found Venomous.

He was small – still an adult proportionally, but almost shrunken. Perhaps made to _feel_ small would be a better term. The mind-space was peculiar that way.

"I didn't expect to see you here," Venomous said. His arms were wrapped around his knees, his forehead resting on top of them.

"Yes, well. You aren't the only one with powers." Well, who _had_ powers. Luckily, Venomous didn't seem inclined to bring that up.

She sat on the cold floor next to him and took in the room. It was strange – she'd passed through such a dark barrier, but the room itself was white, with beige accents. Plastic furniture. No windows. The air smelled sharp, yet stale. She spotted an empty bed, inclined like-

This was a hospital room, she realized.

And she knew.

"I don't remember being here," Venomous whispered. "But something tells me I've spent a lot of time in this place." He closed his eyes, squeezing out a tear that followed the well-established path left by his eyeliner.

"I know this smell. I've smelled it… so often. In dreams. Nightmares, really."

"There's no one else here now," Arin said. "Just you and I. He's gone." But that hadn't always been the case, had it? Venomous's mind still bore scars of that division.

"I thought-" Venomous's voice cracked. He swallowed twice before he found the strength to continue. "When Fink and KO told me about Shadowy Figure, I- I was so happy." More tears spilled free. Venomous tilted his head back, blinking rapidly to no avail. "I thought maybe- maybe he was there after all. Maybe he'd found the strength. Sure he threatened Fink and attacked KO but- but maybe he was scared! He just didn't know them the way I did."

Venomous tightened his grip on his knees. "I was ssso desperate to believe he was s-still here that I was willing to explain away every red flag, every warning sign. Ngk." He swallowed back a sob. "I broke my promissse to them. I didn't- I just couldn't kill him again!" He pressed his forehead between his knees, his body trembling with the force of this own ragged breathing.

"I tried- I tried talking to him. And for once it worked. After all those years."

The lights in the hospital room flickered. Arin hadn't quite gotten a feel for this place, but she could only imagine it would be much, much worse in the dark.

"I deserve this," Venomous said. "It's all my fault. If I'd only done it _right._ If I'd been stronger…"

"We need to get you out of here," Arin said, her voice as gentle as it was firm. "Where is Fink?"

"Fink?" Venomous lifted his head. "She's... she's at the plaza. That one girl is looking after her. Enid, that's it."

"I'm sure Fink wants you to come back."

"I know." Venomous said resting his cheek on one knee. "But I can't. I tried." He stared ahead forlornly. "There's no door."

Arin gestured at the wall she had passed through, which obligingly faded back to its iridescent darkness.

"We can pass through here," she said.

Venomous shook his head frantically. "No. No! I can't, it's- It's too big! Too much!"

"Yes, you can," Arin said, all the authority of her medical license behind her. "You are strong enough."

"I'm never strong enough!" Venomous burst out. "I'm always just a _little_ too weak. Can't save my brother, can't save Boxmore, can't-"

For the first time since she became his therapist, Arin broke her 'no touching' rule. She gripped Venomous's face with both primaries, forcing him to meet her gaze.

" _Yes you are._ You can do this."

More tears spilled from his eyes, but he nodded. She let go.

He stood, facing the black wall. He lifted his hands, chest-height, the same way he had months ago as he spoke about draining his brother. Venomous looked back over his shoulder one last time.

"I'm here with you," Arin said. "You aren't facing this alone."

Venomous drew in a shaky breath, squared his shoulders... and pressed his palms to the blackness.

_Venomous looked into the mirror, hope and anxiety writhing like living things in his chest._

_"Shadowy Figure?" he asked._

**_"After all these years, that's how you choose to address me?"_ ** _The man was standing behind him, to his left. Venomous could see how he got his name, with his eyes concealed in the shadows of his hood._

_But Venomous could see that familiar smile, the sickly grey of his skin-_

"Don't fall for it!" the smaller Venomous next to her shouted. "It's not him, you idiot!"

Arin placed a hand on Venomous's shoulder - the real one, not the one from the memory.

"You can't change it," she said softly. "You can only see it for what it is and move past it."

_The Venomous from the memory stared at Shadowy Figure's reflection, seemingly unaware of the desperate hope on his own face._

_"L... Laser?"_

_Shadowy Figure's grin broadened. **"Yes, Venomous. It's me. Laser."**_

"He would have called me Trevor," the Venomous next to her said. "Or Trev. Or- or even Drain-O! I should have known-"

_"Have... have you always been here? All these years and you couldn't even tell me-" the memory Venomous's voice cracked on the word 'tell'. "You threatened my minion, hurt her and my son-"_

**_"Your- oh, Venomous... I'm so sorrey."_ **

His voice rang painfully insincere to Arin's ears, but the Venomous from the memory appeared somewhat mollified.

_"Why?" he asked simply._

**_"Isn't it obvious?"_ ** _Shadowy Figure wrapped one arm around Venomous, his hand resting possessively on his chest. **"I was so… scared that if you knew, you'd send me away. Kill me again, for real this time."**_

_"No, I- I'd never-"_

**_"But you did."_ ** _Shadowy stepped closer so they were standing cheek to cheek in front of the mirror. **"Shh, shh, don't cry... You were always so soft and... malleable."**_

_"I'm not crying," memory Venomous said, sniffling._

**_"Of course not..."_ ** _Shadowy Figure smiled. **"What if I told you I knew how you could make it up to me. Even-Steven."**_

_Memory Venomous stared into their reflection, entranced. A tear spilled down his cheek and his lips were pressed into a thin, worried frown._

The two of them, faces pressed together side by side in the reflection reminded Arin of comedy and tragedy. The Venomous next to her whimpered like he was in pain.

_"How?"_

**_"We could share. Wouldn't it be fun?"_ **

"No," the Venomous next to her said. "Say no!"

_"You won't hurt them, right? Boxy or Fink or-"_

**_"No, no,"_** Shadowy Figure said soothingly. **_"Of course not."_**

"He's lying!" Venomous shouted. "He's lying, you stupid, fucking-"

_"Deal."_

_And Venomous changed._

_His hair was longer, and purple. When he spoke, it echoed strangely, dual toned._

**"Now... let's have some real fun."**

The memories pelted them like hailstones. Arin kept a steadying hand on Venomous as they watched his fused form wreak havoc - first alone, then with his son.

Arin saw the boy transform and wondered if somehow Venomous had passed on his own fractured nature to the boy. Or perhaps the other personality really was his brother - or some part of him, at least. Perhaps the boy's own mental state was a remnant from the division between these two minds.

She supposed it didn't matter - not now, not anymore.

Venomous flinched as an orange robot was smashed to pieces in his memory.

"It's fine," the Venomous next to her said. His arms were wrapped tightly around himself. "It's okay. They destroy themselves all the time. It doesn't- it doesn't _hurt._ "

"Stepfather?" a green robot said before the boy – TKO, apparently – smashed a hole through its chest. Venomous let out a quiet, pained noise. He closed his eyes for a moment before visibly forcing them open once more.

Arin stood with him as POINT was attacked. The Plaza. Neo Riot City. Even Boxmore itself.

Perhaps Arin would have numbed herself to the violence, had she watched it alone. She didn't know the people or buildings or machines involved, not personally. It would have been easy to pretend it was like a movie, perhaps something about the horror of war.

Or, it would have been, had Venomous not jerked and twitched with every blow as if they were landing on him rather than some little blue bot who was almost comically insistent on the moniker Jethro.

"There's so much of it," Venomous whispered. "I hate it. I hate how I enjoyed it."

Dr. Arinsdottir was honestly relieved at the excuse to look away from the carnage. She looked to her patient, still shrunken and hunched over to make himself smaller still.

Venomous licked his lips, digging his fingers into his arms. "It was like being drunk. Or- or high, maybe? I was so happy to have him back. To feel whole again. I had my powers, I had my brother, I even had a son! I'd been so sure we'd never get along, but there we were. Having fun. Maybe even bonding a little, I thought."

"I smiled and laughed and I don't know why. I remember being angry at the mess, at all the damaged bots. I remember being afraid. I remember wanting to stop. I tried to move my hands, but they didn't work. I tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come out. I wanted to stop, but we couldn't. We were having so much fun."

"You told me once that Laser was careless with other people's things," Arin said.

Venomous stared at her, eyes wide.

_"Professor Venomous! Haven't seen a lot of you lately!"_

Venomous froze, then slowly turned to the scene in front of him.

Lord Boxman, a villain Arin had only ever seen in pictures, was in front of Shadowy Venomous. He was small, almost cute. His wide eyes and puffed up feathers only bolstered his cuteness, despite being signs of alarm.

_"You missed Fink's recorder recital last weekend, just sayin'."_

Professor Venomous stared at Boxman with almost unnerving intensity, as if he was a starving man encountering a meal. As if even blinking would cause the memory to vanish.

_"You've been out flying around with your son… while I've been keeping things together and running here. Alone."_

**"Hehehe. Don't you love it?"** _Shadowy Venomous said._

_"I... don't," Boxman said. "That new kid destroyed tons of my robots! I'm more about the slow back and forth of classic evil. Not this wiping enemies off the map type of thing, you know?"_

She could see Venomous squinting through his tears, unwilling to close his eyes, even when a ball of purple energy shot past them, courtesy of TKO.

_"Hahaha… 'classic evil'," the boy mocked._

**"Well that's just too bad, isn't it?"** _Shadowy Venomous said with a grin before leaning forward with a hint of something like anger on his face._ **"This is what we're doing now."**

Venomous made a noise like a wounded animal.

_"Hey! I am a villain! Not! A monster! I'm going to have to ask you to leave the premises!" Boxman said, drawing himself up to his full, unimpressive height._

Venomous choked out a whimper, growing even smaller.

 **"Ooh, is that what you think? Well,"** _Shadowy Venomous said,_ **"It just so happens that I'm the biggest shareholder at Boxmore and these are in fact _my_ premises." **_He tossed Boxman an empty box, labeled Diapers._ **"So you can take whatever fits in that box and be on your way out."**

As she watched, Shadowy Venomous seemed to glitch in Venomous's memory, like two images overlapping. One delighted, the other despairing.

_Boxman blubbered a moment, before steeling himself and summoning his "children" to him._

Suddenly, Venomous's reaction to the bots' destruction made a lot more sense.

_"Yes, daddy?" "Yes, father?"_

_"Where's Jethro?"_

Arin remembered Shadowy Venomous laughing as TKO smashed through an entire line of chanting blue robots.

_"Em…" the orange robot with a feminine voice said, "There's no Jethro left…"_

_Boxman drooped and let out a soft, "Oh…"_

_Shadowy Venomous glitched once again – one face rolling his eyes in boredom, the other a mask of horror._

_"Professor Venomous… from this day on… this partnership is over!"_

"You promised!" Venomous shouted as the area around them darkened. "You promised you wouldn't hurt him!"

**_"And I didn't."_ **

Arin recognized the area around them - Venomous's mindscape. The same area she'd passed through to find him. But it was in a state she'd never seen.

The pictures of Venomous lining the back wall were covered with spray paint. The furniture was overturned. The floor was wet. Sinks were running, the fridge left open, and trash was everywhere.

 ** _"See? He's fine."_** Shadowy Figure smiled down at Venomous's shrunken form. **_"It's not like you ever expected it to last, right? A weak, pathetic villain like you."_**

"I..." Venomous shrunk even further, to the point where Arin had to kneel to be on his level.

"I couldn't stop him," Venomous said. Arin didn't know if he was speaking to her or to himself. "I wasn't strong enough."

"You are now," Arin said. "I know you are. You can do this. For Boxman, for Fink... and most of all, for you."

"I can't fight him. I've already failed him so much." He shrank even further.

"You didn't. _He_ failed _you_. He never should have asked you to drain him. He should have respected your belongings and boundaries. He should have listened to your wants and needs."

Venomous clutched his head, fingers tangling in his hair.

"You have been bottling up your own pain and resentment and trauma for years. Making yourself smaller to give him a place to be."

"I know, I know, _I know..._ " His fingers twisted and pulled.

"This is your life, Venomous. Not his. Your brother is gone. This thing, this... toxic _parasite_ of a shadow... It can't hold a candle to you."

Arin leaned in closer. "It's time to be big."

Venomous stood up.

 ** _"Oh? Is wittle Twevor mad?"_** Shadowy Figure cooed.

"Yes," Venomous said. "I am."

Arin saw him grow. Just a bit.

 ** _"Oh boo hoo,"_** Shadowy Figure said, waving his hand. **_"It must be so hard having a body."_**

"But it's mine! Not yours!" Venomous shot up another few inches.

**_" Ours. Our body."_ **

"No, _Lawrence,_ " Venomous said. "It's _mine._ "

**_"You owe me-"_ **

"No. I. Don't." Venomous grew taller with every word.

"I don't owe you my time, my body, my _anything_..." He took a step forward.

"You abused my trust, you hurt my family-"

 ** _"Your family?!"_** Shadowy Figure shrieked. **_"I am your only family-"_**

"You aren't even real!" Venomous said, jabbing him in the chest with an accusing finger. "My brother hated feeling trapped by his body – he never would have imprisoned me in my own Cob damn mind!"

**_"Yes I would! I did!"_ **

"Then _you_ aren't my brother! Not in any way that matters."

Shadowy Figure reared back like he'd been slapped. **_"What did you just say to me?"_** he snarled.

"Something I should have said the moment Fink told me about you." Venomous said, his voice cold and hard as steel. He grew larger and larger, finally overtaking Shadowy Figure.

"Get out," Venomous said, "And never come back."

Then he reared back his fist and punched him. Shadowy Figure shattered like a broken mirror, the shards dissolving into dust as they hit the ground.

Venomous's mindscape was still trashed, but suddenly much, much larger than before, as if the space had doubled in size.

"The wall is gone," Arin Aarinsdottir said. She could feel the warm glow of pride in her chest, the awe of what her patient had accomplished coursing through her.

"It is, but..." Venomous looked around at the wreckage, face falling. He was normal sized once more. "...It's such a mess," he said despairingly.

"Don't worry," Arin said, stepping closer to give his shoulder a light squeeze. "Come back with me and next week? Let's start cleaning."

Venomous chuckled, his whole body sagging with relief. "Deal."


	6. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to clean up and rebuild some bridges.  
> NOTE: there is a little bit of smut in this chapter. It is separated by ~~~~~~~. So, if that isn't your thing, you can skip it by hitting CTRL + F and searching ~ or just scrolling until you see the second ~~~~~~~~  
> Thanks for sticking with me, and please enjoy!  
> Also! If you want to see Dr. Aarinsdottir, someone was kind enough to draw her! Check her out here!  
> [ link ](https://twitter.com/parfaitking/status/1226019712766742529?s=19)

The "clean up" in the aftermath of tearing down the wall was easier, if slower paced. The first weeks were more difficult, of course. Professor Venomous seemed torn between the urge to 'go away' as he put it and to stay in the present moment.

She wrote down "Trauma Management/Dissociation" as one of their short term goals - below ~~"Quit Drinking"~~ and "Cooking".

Venomous gnawed on his lower lip as he eyed the updated list.

"Let's work on an action plan for this," Arin said. "I think we can make some real headway."

Venomous responded well to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - particularly when it came to monitoring his own reactions. They discussed warning signs, triggers, stressors... and as they did, Venomous slowly began to relax.

"What if I can't stop myself?" Venomous asked. He burrowed back into the chair - a gesture she now recognized as a self-soothing mechanism, rather than a meager attempt at stealth. "What if I go away again or get trapped in my own mind?"

"Let's explore that," Arin said. She knew as well as Venomous that the wall had been torn down in his mind, leaving him nowhere to go to. He still dissociated, but it was less catatonic, more a sense of unreality. But that wasn't the issue, really.

"We've already been over how to recognize stress before it gets to that point as well as how to de-stress through progressive muscle relaxation. And you are making a lot of progress on reframing your thoughts and recognizing when you might be in a downward spiral."

Venomous's lips twitched into a pleased smile for just a moment before he smoothed it into something more neutral.

"Now let's say, despite all that, something happens and you 'go away'. Let's start with your fears-" she caught Venomous's faint frown and corrected herself- "your _concerns._ The worst case scenario, if you will."

Venomous squirmed even further back into the chair. "Well, uh... The biggest concern is that Fink will need me and I- I won't be able to..." He trailed off, waving a hand vaguely.

"Let's start with that. Does Fink have someone she can call if you aren't available?"

"Uh..."

"Why don't you come up with an emergency contact list for next week?"

"I can do that." Venomous relaxed slightly, but still remained tense.

"Perhaps I can have a few sessions with Fink and teach her your warning signs, along with some advice of how to bring you out of it?"

Venomous brightened. "That would be an acceptable solution," he said.

"Then why are you still so tense?"

"What if he comes back?" Venomous whispered.

Arin considered her response carefully. She didn't know enough about Shadowy Figure to really say if he was still a threat or not. It depended on whether Shadowy really was Laserblast/Lawrence - an outside force that could invade him - or a true alternate personality somehow banished.

"Shadowy Figure had to be brought in - whether you absorbed him or created him," Dr. Aarinsdottir said finally. "You spent years carefully creating a space for him. That space is gone now, and you have no desire to recreate it, correct?"

"Correct," Venomous said firmly.

"Then whether Shadowy Figure is somewhere out there or not, he has no foothold in you," she said, pouring all the certainty into her voice that she could muster.

Venomous visibly sagged with relief, eyes drooping shut. "Thank you," he whispered.

"You are very welcome."

Fink wasn't the most diligent of patients, not at first anyway. Usually with children, Arin encouraged them to talk about their interests to build rapport.

That... did not work with Fink.

"Listen, lady," Fink said, looking up from her videos game for the first time in the twenty minutes she'd been sitting in Arin's office. "I'm only here 'cuz my boss told me to. We aren't buddy-buddies."

"Did Professor Venomous say why he wanted you here?" Arin asked.

Fink shrugged, slouching further in the particularly insolent way only children could manage.

Arin decided to take that as a no.

"Do you remember when I had to come help your boss at Carol's house?"

"Carol?" Fink squinted suspiciously. "Who's that?"

Arin panicked, wracking her brain. "Er, KO's mom?"

"Oh, right. Her." Fink sniffed disdainfully.

"Do you remember the state your boss was in?"

"No," Fink muttered mutinously. "No one told me anything. Like I was a baby."

"Your boss goes away in his head sometimes," Arin began.

Fink nodded, still suspicious but unsurprised. Her sheer matter-of-fact response told Arin that Fink was aware of more than Venomous thought.

"You fa- your boss was concerned about these incidents, so I was hoping to show you how to get him back out if he... gets stuck."

For the first time in all the months Arin had seen her, Fink put down her videos game console, tucking it into the pocket of her denim jacket.

"You mean... I can really do that?" Her eyes were wide and so hopeful.

Arin wondered how long she had known about Venomous's alter ego. How many years had Fink watched, feeling powerless?

"I'll show you some techniques. If it ever gets really bad, like at Ca- er, KO's house... you can call me, okay?"

Fink nodded, leaning forward slightly.

"The first and best way to stop a dissociative episode is to prevent it from happening in the first place..."

"Should I... tell Sparks?" Venomous paced the far wall of the office, clutching his elbow with one hand and rubbing his chin with the other.

"About what?" Dr. Aarinsdottir asked placidly.

"Our... relationship? Cob, it wasn't even mine, just his!" Venomous bit the side of his thumb, carefully avoiding his incisors, she noticed. Arin wondered how many times he'd accidentally drawn blood.

"Do you want to tell her?" Arin asked.

Venomous actually stopped and stared at her before shivering violently. "Cob, no!" he said fervently. "But shouldn't she...? She thought she was sleeping with Laser! Well, I mean, technically..."

Yes, that was... complicated.

"It wasn't me, that's the thing. I never wanted- She doesn't owe me anything, but- She was tricked too. Like me."

Perhaps Venomous merely wanted to have someone to share the misery with, but it seemed more likely that his own warped sense of justice was at play.

"Let me rephrase my question then," Arin said. "Do you want her to know?"

Venomous stood stock still, barely even breathing... then nodded.

"Yeah. She should know. I don't- I don't think I can tell her, though."

"Then how will she find out?" Arin asked, already seeing where this was going.

Venomous widened his eyes in an honest to Cob pleading manner. She wondered dryly if he had learned it from Fink, or if she learned it from him.

She convinced him to write down what she was permitted to disclose, should Carol get into contact.

It put his mind at ease, and she doubted Carol would feel the need to look her up.

Two months later, on a Thursday afternoon just as her last patient left, Carol Garcia-Kincaid dropped by her office to schedule an appointment.

"I went looking for you. I've... got some stuff weighing in my mind, lately, and if you could get Venomous to open up, you've got to be good." She smiled nervously, tugging at one lock of her short, blonde hair.

"He told you about me, didn't he," Arin said dryly, not bothering to turn it into a question.

Carol put her hands on her hips, rolling her eyes. "No, he didn't, thanks. He hasn't been back since he had that breakdown in my bathroom."

Carol's expression softened. "I was a little worried about him, actually. I still don't know why he freaked out."

She cleared her throat, resuming her more confident posture. "Anyway, I looked up psychiatrists near the Neutral Zone and you were right at the top of the list, picture and everything!" Carol smiled, displaying the charming gap in her teeth.

Arin sighed.

She ended up just giving Venomous's list to Carol and answering questions.

Carol took the news better than expected, which wasn't saying much.

There were a lot of tears. Tears, and snot and blubbering. Arin's heart ached for the woman. She had been lied to twice over - by Shadowy Figure himself and Venomous by omission.

"Does this- I mean, did I- He didn't really consent-"

"Carol."

She looked up and sniffed, eyes still wet with tears.

"To the best of your knowledge, he had consented. You had literally no way of knowing. Venomous had been concealing his disorder for over a decade before you'd even met."

Carol nodded and blew her nose loudly.

"The only party fully aware," Dr. Aarinsdottir continued, "was his other personality, Shadowy Figure, who is now gone."

"You're- This sounds awful, but... Are you sure he's gone?"

"Yes. I used my own abilities to make sure all traces of him have been eliminated from Venomous's mind. Both of you should be able to heal in peace."

Carol, as it turned out, was much more tactile than most of Arin's patients and certainly less restrained. Arin yelped rather embarrassingly as she was tugged into a big bear hug and swung around.

"Thank you so much," Carol said, still hugging her fiercely. "I can't tell you how relieved I am."

"Glad to help," Arin wheezed, awkwardly patting the woman's back with her right secondary. "Please put me down, now..."

Dr. Aarinsdottir made steady progress with Professor Venomous over the following months. Even Fink seemed slightly less antagonistic, greeting her with a casual "hey, Doc!" before Venomous's weekly session.

But as the weather grew colder, Venomous grew more anxious.

"I want- I want to finish the list," Professor Venomous said, pretending to read the books on Arin's shelf along the far wall. At least he wasn't pacing, she supposed - he seemed less agitated, more anxious.

"Which list?" Dr. Aarinsdottir asked.

"The short term goals list, obviously," Venomous snapped. He winced at his own tone and slinked back to his seat.

"Sorrey," he muttered, burrowing back into the chair.

"Apology accepted," Arin said easily. Over the past year, she had gotten to know him fairly well. He got a bit waspish when stressed, but he was 'all bark and no bite' as Arin's mother liked to say about some of the more difficult parents she'd had to deal with over the years.

Venomous wrapped his arms around himself and squeezed. He hadn't asked for the blanket yet, but based on his behavior, it likely wouldn't be long.

"Let's see," Arin said. "You have already told Carol what really happened, though in a roundabout way..."

Venomous had the grace to look sheepish.

"...and I believe you've already spoken to KO."

Venomous nodded, relaxing slightly. Arin had found that a little bit of praise or even just acknowledgement of Professor Venomous's accomplishments was enough to bring down his anxiety to manageable levels. A reminder of his own competence, really.

"We've talked about giving weekends another shot. Maybe just every other week for now," Venomous confessed.

"That's wonderful news," Arin said warmly.

Venomous preened.

"And my cooking instructor told me just Thursday that my chicken came out perfectly edible!" Venomous said with pride.

Arin struggled to keep herself from laughing, managing to turn the noise that escaped her into a small cough. "Well done! 'Cooking' is well underway then. How is the 'get a hobby' goal going?"

"I've acquired a few small bonsais and a rock garden," Venomous said smugly. "I have it well in hand."

"Then all that's left is..." Arin made a show of looking down at the sheet, pretending not to notice as Venomous's face paled.

"...apologizing to Box- to Lord Boxman," Venomous finished. He resumed hugging himself, his fingers digging into his arms hard enough for his knuckles to turn white.

"Why don't we talk through it," Dr. Aarinsdottir said gently. "An apology is simple enough."

Venomous shook his head, letting go of himself and gripping the arms of the chair instead.

"I put that man through hell," Venomous said. "A mere apology won't do. He deserves to know everything."

"Everything?"

"Everything. From my brother's death to the... incident in my head. With the wall." He dug his nails into the arm rests hard enough that Arin was concerned for her furniture.

"That's... quite an endeavor." Arin wondered if that included her involvement. She tried to keep her powers under wraps, after all. Touch telepathy was just asking for a malpractice suit, she was sure.

"You have plenty of time," Arin said. "There's no time limit."

"I... well..."

Arin cocked her head.

"I had. Thought that. Maybe, for Cornmas..."

Venomous had regressed to his abbreviated speech pattern again. It had been quite some time since he'd gone back to it.

"I thought an explanation might. Make an... acceptable gift." Venomous was pressed so hard against the back of the chair that it creaked.

"Cornmas is 23 days away," Arin said carefully.

"Yes, I'm aware."

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Well then I guess we'd better get started."

_"I can't do this," Venomous said. "I can't. What was I thinking? It's too much. Maybe next year. Yes, next year, I'll-"_

_"You can do this," his long-suffering therapist said, cutting through his paranoid bullshit as always. "You are strong enough."_

_Really, if anyone would know, it would be her - he couldn't lie in his own damn head, after all, so she'd seen pretty much everything._

_"But it's... it's a lot. Too much, really."_

_"Send him a letter," Dr. Aarinsdottir said reasonably. She tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear that had escaped from its low, messy bun. "You can just hand it to him and be done."_

_"He'll just throw it out," Venomous said._

_"And? How is that your responsibility?"_

_She didn't get it._ Probably because you didn't explain it, PV, _he thought to himself._

_"That isn't the point," he said, straining for patience._

_"What is the goal of your explanation, then?" she asked. She sounded curious, rather than exasperated. "If the end goal isn't in the telling, then what is it?"_

_She was frighteningly good at cutting to the heart of things, using words better than Venomous used scalpels. He supposed that was why he liked her._

_He wasn't used to dissecting himself like this, piecing together his own motives. This wasn't abstract, like seeking power, or concrete, like scouring for glorbs. He felt on the cusp of something, though._

_"I suppose," he said slowly, "it's not me telling him that matters so much as that he_ knows. _"_

_"Knows what?" Dr. Aarinsdottir asked, her focus sharpening in intensity._

_"Knows..." The truth? Yes, but also no. Knows what I've been through? Maybe that would persuade him to give me another chance, but that wasn't it either. Why does it matter so much that I- oh._

_"Knows that... it wasn't his fault."_

_Venomous could feel his heart racing in his chest._

_"He was wonderful, and my time being with him was the happiest I have ever been in my life." Venomous licked his lips, his mouth dry. "When Laser... when I... There was nothing he could have done to stop me from giving in to Shadowy Figure. All those years, all the- the guilt and the grief and the love-"_

_Venomous swallowed, his vision blurring with tears. "I wouldn't have been able to_ live _with myself if I hadn't tried. Even though it was the biggest mistake of my life,_ I had to make it. _And it wasn't his fault."_

_Spindly green-grey fingers delicately placed a tissue on his knee. It was a kind gesture, but it wasn't what he wanted. He wanted the smell of metal and sweat, thin arms around his waist and a soft stomach pressing against his thighs._

_He couldn't have that anymore, but he could at least do right by the man he loved._

_"It seems to me," Dr. Aarinsdottir said carefully, "that the only way you can be sure to get him to listen is to tell him in person."_

_Venomous nodded. That had never been in question, really. He'd known it from the beginning. Didn't stop him from dreading it though._

_"What are you afraid of?" Dr. Aarinsdottir asked. She didn't sound judgmental, just curious as always._

_"Gee," Venomous said sarcastically. "Maybe that he'll slam the door in my face? Kill me on sight? N-not believe me?" He cringed at his own stutter._

_"You can't control his reactions," Dr. Aarinsdottir reminded him with horrible gentleness._

_"I know," he muttered._

_"Giving Boxman peace of mind for Cornmas seems like a simple thing, but there's a lot to it, isn't there?" The question was rhetorical, but Venomous nodded anyway. "Why don't we break it down into more manageable pieces?"_

_"Like what?" Venomous asked._

_"Essentially, there are three goals, as I see it. Getting in the door, telling him without interruption, and getting back out."_

_"The first is probably the hardest," Venomous said._

_"Not necessarily," Dr. Aarinsdottir said. "Let's look at it strategically. What's the easiest way to get in the door?"_

_Venomous thought it over. "Well, breaking it down, probably... but that will only make him angrier."_

_Dr. Aarinsdottir made a face like she was in pain._

_"_ Knocking, _Venomous. I meant knocking. Getting_ him _to open the door_ for _you."_

_"I can't imagine that he'd open the door willingly for me," Venomous said bluntly._

_"Perhaps if you gave him a good reason? Perhaps brought something with you?" She hinted._

_"A hostage wouldn't work," Venomous reminded her. "His kids are robots who self-destruct all the time. There's no point."_

_"I meant a_ gift, _" she said, pinching the bridge of her nose - or rather, the area where it would have been._

_"Right, of course!" Venomous lied with a chuckle. "I was just kidding."_

_She leveled him with an unimpressed look._

_"Any recommendations as to what I should get him?" Venomous asked meekly._

_"You know him best."_

_"I haven't seen him in over a year," Venomous said despondently. "Normally, I'd give money if I didn't know what else to get, but I don't want it to seem like a bribe..."_

_"Perhaps you could put your cooking lessons to good use?"_

Venomous trudged up the overgrown trail leading to the cabin on the hill. His fingers felt like they were frozen to the bottom of the cake platter, but he was honestly afraid to move them and risk jarring the cake.

Over the past week, he'd baked literally dozens of cakes until he'd finally gotten it right. Cob, he'd baked four today alone! This one was the best he'd made. He could only hope it was good enough.

"He likes chocolate," Fink had insisted, helping him slather on fudge icing, "trust me."

Venomous wasn't so sure, but it wasn't like he knew enough about Boxy's cake preferences to contradict her.

At least he and Fink had had fun baking and decorating the practice cakes together.

He stopped in front of the door. He took a moment to run through his breathing exercises – the last thing he needed was to pass out on Boxy's doorstep.

Cob, he hoped Ernesto hadn't sent him on a wild goose chase. He'd accepted Venomous's apology easily enough and provided Boxman's supposed address readily.

He hoped it was real.

He held the cake behind his back and knocked.

There was a breathless pause before the door opened.

Cob, it really _was_ him. His face was soft, relaxed as it was on his once-rare days off. He wore a sweater in place of his usual work uniform.

Venomous ached with the need to touch him, to prove he was real and standing in front of him.

"I'm sorry," Venomous blurted, whipping out the apology cake and cowering behind it like it was a shield.

He waited for shouting or the hum of a ray gun charging. Instead, all he heard was a sigh as the door creaked open further.

"Here we go again," Box said.

Venomous peeked out from behind the cake. Boxman was smiling.

"Come on in before you freeze to death," he said fondly.

Venomous went.

_"Now, let's talk about your second goal of the evening," Dr. Aarinsdottir said._

_"I'm actually... not all that worried about him interrupting," Venomous said. "More with actually getting the words out."_

_"Interesting. May I ask why?"_

_"I'm not, ah." Venomous swallowed, then tasted the air under the guise of wetting his lips. "Not good with words. When stressed."_

_"But you aren't worried about interruptions?"_

_Venomous smiled ruefully. "No. I know Boxy. He may slam the door in my face, but if he does let me in, he'll let me finish talking. Maybe chime in from time to time, but he'll hear me out."_

_"So the challenge will be getting the words out," Dr. Aarinsdottir said. "There's only one way to do that."_

_Venomous felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. "Oh?"_

_"Practice."_

_Yeah, that's what I'd thought she'd say..._

"...and that's. Well, that's basically it," Venomous said, staring into the mug of chamomile tea Boxman had provided.

As much as he'd hated it at the time, practicing had helped. He must have recorded himself a dozen times, and listened to them even more.

"So, uh... any. Any thoughts?" Venomous asked, hating himself for how uncertain he sounded.

"Hmm..." Boxman tapped his chin with one talon. "Does this mean KO is technically your nephew?"

"I... what? I mean, it was still _my_ body, even if I wasn't really- wait. That's- _that's_ what you asked about? No 'how could you?' or-"

"PV," Boxman said, taking Venomous's hand with his own, "I know how family can really screw you up. My own son kicked me out of my house and launched me into the sun! And, you know what? In hindsight, I kind of deserved it." He had faint crow's feet at the corner of his flesh eye when he smiled, Venomous couldn't help but notice. He wanted to kiss them.

"Box," he said softly.

The shorter villain shushed him. "It's fine now, don't worry. The point is, I get it. It hurts that you didn't feel like you were able to tell me, but I kind of get that too."

"I was scared you'd ask me not to," Venomous confessed. "Or that I'd miss my chance and lose him for good."

"You've always been stubborn that way," Boxman said, chuckling. "Don't think you're completely off the hook, though. You've got a lot to make up for - starting with keeping up your therapy. That Dr. Aarinsdottir seems to be helping."

"I think so t- wait. I. I never said her name."

"Ah.. heh. About that..." Boxman tapped his fingers and claws together nervously. "I, er... might have already known about most of it. How do you think I knew to be here on Cornmas eve, rather than at the factory? Cob, how do you think I knew to have some of that gross tea that you like handy?"

"What."

Boxman grinned sheepishly, his lovely, sharp teeth gleaming. "Fink's been keeping us up to date."

"Fink? Wait, us?!"

"Me and the bots," Boxman admitted. "She was worried we'd hate you or enact revenge, or something like that. Not that I wasn't, er, upset at the beginning. And Darrell didn't take your return well, at first. But, ah... we still read her updates. She told us about the therapy, the cooking, the... breakdown at Carol's..."

 _When I get back, I'm grounding her until she's thirty,_ Venomous thought.

"She, ah... she showed us your goals for therapy. Including the one about me. And, well, we've been rooting for you."

Boxman smiled, soft and almost shy, squeezing Venomous's cold fingers with his own warm hand.

 _Okay, maybe not grounded after all,_ Venomous thought.

"I forgive you, Venomous," Boxman said.

Venomous could feel tears building up behind his eyelids once more. "I don't deserve it," Venomous said, struggling not to cry.

"Good thing we're villains, then," Boxman said with a wink. "We take all sorts of things we don't deserve."

Venomous bit his lip. "I- I really want to kiss you right now," he blurted, unable to stop himself.

Boxman grinned wickedly, dropping his hand in favor of crawling into his lap, throwing his arms around his neck.

"Oh, PV," he purred. "I thought you'd never ask."

_"Then all that's left is getting out safely," Dr. Aarinsdottir had said._

_"I imagine that will involve a lot of running and violating a few traffic laws," Venomous had drolled in response._

_He had never been so happy to be proven wrong._

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Normally, Venomous would have been embarrassed to be caught making out with Boxman on the couch, but Mikayla seemed more amused than anything, informing them that she would be spending the night with her siblings at the factory and to have a good time.

"Mikayla," she said with a wink.

"Thank you," Venomous croaked, face burning.

She looked a bit awkward on two legs, but she opened the door with confidence.

"Well, we're all alone now," Boxman said with a suggestive eyebrow waggle. "What should we do?"

"More kissing?" Venomous suggested hopefully.

Boxman smiled, guiding him down to lie back on the couch and settling on top of him before pressing their lips together once more. His weight on Venomous's chest and stomach was soothing. Feeling daring, Venomous allowed himself to cup Boxman's cheek, tilting his head to deepen the kiss.

He couldn't stop himself from moaning at the first touch of Boxman's tongue to his own. Boxman smiled against his lips, then giggled when PV retaliated by gently scraping one of his incisors against his lower lip.

Venomous lost count of the long, faintly chamomile-flavored kisses they'd exchanged on the couch. His cocks were hard and aching, but it seemed unimportant, distant compared Boxman's lips and tongue.

He whined when Boxman broke the kiss, irrationally convinced that the kissing was over for good.

"Hey, PV..." Boxman murmured, "uh, are we, ah... just kissing?" He grinned nervously. "'Cause my pants are... kinda tight right now, so... we could do more?" His voice went squeaky with uncertainty near the end. "Or not, if you don't want-"

"I want," Venomous blurted. "Cob, Boxy, please, let me-"

"Yes, of course, Professor-" Boxman said, hurriedly stripping out of his clothes.

"Venomous, just Venomous right now, fuck..." he trailed off, finally getting his hand on Boxman's cock again. "So hard... already leaking..."

He was on the verge of drooling, he knew. He loved Boxman's body, how soft it was and round...

"Come on, PV," Boxman teased, "Don't be shy!"

Venomous felt clumsy with excitement as he shucked his own clothes. It was hard to take his eyes off of Boxman's reclined body, from his hooded eyes and wicked grin, down those round pecs and rounder stomach, to that gorgeous, thick cock jutting proudly from its sheath...

"I don't think I'll last long," Venomous confessed, finally nude himself.

"Me either. I just need to touch you." Boxman spread his arms in welcome, and Venomous went gladly.

He molded himself to the contours of Boxman's body, wrapping his hand around Boxman's cock even as their lips met once more. His length was still slick with his internal lubricant, hot and throbbing to the touch.

"Can't reach you," Boxman wheezed between kisses. "Not if you wanna keep - mmh - kissing."

"Don't care," Venomous said before licking his way back into that wide, generous mouth.

"PV…" he whined as Venomous swiped a thumb over the head.

"Come on, Boxy," he murmured, as he kissed and mouthed his way along Boxman's jaw and down his neck. "Wanna make you feel good…" He couldn't resist the temptation of those unmarked collarbones, worrying at the skin with his teeth and sucking until he was certain it would bruise.

"Venomouss, I- FUCK!" Venomous let go of the abused skin in time to feel hot come on his fist and stomach. He watched Boxman's face contort in pleasure before relaxing once more into something languid.

"Cob, that was…" Boxman mumbled. His robotic eye whirred faintly, the way it occasionally did when he got overloaded with pleasure. Venomous tried not to preen too obviously.

"Wait, did you come?" Boxman asked, sitting up. Venomous's own cocks throbbed.

"It, ah… It's unimportant," Venomous said. "I can take care of it."

Boxman wasn't having it. "Come on, PV," he said, patting his stomach. "Up here, so I can have a look at you." He grinned wickedly, and Venomous was powerless to stop himself.

His legs were splayed wide as he straddled Boxman's stomach, shivering when Boxman touched the tip of the left with one humanoid finger.

"Normally, I'd be fine with you getting yourself off," Boxman said with a lazy grin as he traced down the length. "Coming _allll_ over me like the possessive bastard you are…"

Venomous's cocks twitched in a very incriminating way and Venomous blushed.

"But I really, really want to touch you too," Boxman continued. "Get, ah… _reacquainted._ "

Venomous bit his lip. "Please," he said, once he'd gotten himself under control.

Boxman squeezed both cocks together with his avian hand and began stroking with his human one. Slowly.

"Box, please…"

"You're mine, PV. Say it."

"Boxy…" Venomous moaned at the wicked twist of Boxman's wrist.

The avian hand let go, drifting down to cradle his balls. "Say it!"

"Cob, Boxy, I'm yours! I've always-" Venomous gasped as Boxman's human hand picked up speed, his thumb swiping over one head, then the other. "Always been yours. Even when I didn't- Fuck! – Didn't know it."

Between Boxman's soft eyes, sharp grin, and talented fingers, Venomous could feel himself coming apart. He could feel it building in his spine, his toes curling, back arching.

"Boxy, I love you! I love y- OH!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When he came to, he was curled around Boxman, still feeling boneless and warm.

"Welcome back, PV," Boxman teased. "I don't think you've ever passed out before." His chest was puffed up with pride and he looked so adorably smug.

"You're a man of many talents," Venomous said gravely, before giving in and allowing the goofy grin he'd been fighting to spread across his face.

"I really do love you."

"I love you too," Boxman said, softly, like it was a secret.

They stared at each other for a moment, smiling, before they both started cackling.

"Hooo… We're a mess, aren't we?" Boxman said, wiping away a tear of mirth.

"Heheh… That's alright," Venomous said, still getting his breath back. "We'll figure it out."

Three years later…

"Have fun at your concert!" KO said, waving as Venomous and Boxman made their way to the door.

Fink rolled her eyes and started the match while he wasn't looking.

"I'm sorrey, KO," Venomous said, "I know that it's your weekend with me, but-"

"Oh, I don't mind!" KO said. "I don't usually spend much time with Fink, anyway. It'll be fun!" He was unaware of how rapidly his player character was losing health.

"And, aha, you're suuuure none of you want to go?" Lord Boxman asked.

"Nope!" Shannon and Raymond didn't look up, too focused on recording the scene. "We have all _sorts_ of fun planned for little KO."

Venomous hesitated.

"Yeah!" Darrell said. "I have _tons_ of new costumes for dress up! And we're gonna beat him so bad at Golden Statues, just you wait!"

Venomous relaxed. "Well, have fun, then."

"I will!" KO said.

"K.O.! Total Knock-out!" the TV said.

"Huh? Wait! FINK!!!"

The bots howled with laughter, which Boxman and Venomous took as their cue to go.

"You look dashing, husband of mine," Boxman said, patting their linked hands with his talons.

"But not as handsome as you," Venomous cooed, helping himself to a kiss.

Boxman cackled. "Oh, don't tempt me, you snake! Dr. Aarinsdottir really wanted you to come to this concert! We can't be late!"

"Spoilsport…"

The curtains rose to an insect-adjacent woman in a pale pink dress standing nervously in front of a piano. A spotlight landed on her and she straightened before slowly making her way to the gleaming grand piano.

"Hmm… a first time composer," an animated skateboard-adjacent said in a nasally voice. "For Laserblast… Sonata in D… no major or minor? How unprofessional!"

Venomous gritted his teeth. He had promised himself to remain on his best behavior, after all.

Dr. Aarinsdottir sat down at the piano, visibly took a deep breath… and began to play.

It started with a happy little tune, followed by a lower, sadder echo. Soft, almost an afterthought. Happy, sad. Happy, sad.

"She's playing in F! Not D!" the skateboard man said. "I have perfect pitch, you know! She's doing it all-"

Lord Boxman casually leaned over and shot him with a chewing gum bazooka, gumming the skateboard's mouth shut. Venomous squeezed Boxman's hand in gratitude.

On stage, the music had shifted. Sped up, until major and minor were playing over one another. It sounded eerie, disjointed, but as it built in volume Venomous's heart caught in his throat, though he wasn't sure why. It ended on a clashing of notes that felt… unresolved somehow. Like something vital was missing.

Then the song changed yet again. This time, the lower part dominated. The tune was slower, filled with poignant pauses, as if waiting for the major part to fill in the gaps. The minor tune was beautiful like this, almost pleading. And then the major crept in, but not the same as before. Before it had been higher, at least somewhat harmonious. But this… This was disjointed, a perversion of the first melody. Jarringly loud in some places, an ominous overlay in others. Venomous found himself squeezing Boxman's hand tight, his heart racing. At one point, Dr. Aarinsdottir had two hands directly on top of the others, playing _almost_ the same notes, _almost_ in sync, just offset enough to be deliberate, to send shivers of alarm juddering down the spine.

And then the song changed again. Instead of the illusion of harmony, this was a war. Major, minor, and something that wasn't quite either, battling it out across the keys. The aching longing of minor, the careless light of major that slowly shifted into something other and somehow frightening.

There was another pause, longer than all those previous, leaving Venomous breathless. And then she played again. It was the melody from the beginning, but somehow completely different. The minor parts were louder, leaving only faint echoes of the higher, softer major counterpoint. It should have sounded sad, yet… It was a relief. Beautiful, almost. As the volume built once more, the major strains fell naturally into place – not clashing, but contributing – until the final notes. It ended in minor, but rather than mournful, it sounded _triumphant._

Dr. Aarinsdottir removed her hands from the keys and stood, approaching the front of the stage. Venomous was already on his feet applauding before she finished her bow.

Arin smiled when Professor Venomous and Lord Boxman approached her after the show.

"I'm glad you were able to make it," she said.

"It was beautiful!" Boxman sniffed, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief before throwing his arms around her and squeezing.

"I am… very glad you enjoyed it." She patted his back awkwardly as Professor Venomous grinned.

Venomous had warned her how emotional his husband got in response to music, after all.

Professor Venomous finally peeled his husband away, only for Lord Boxman to latch onto him, eyes still watery, but smiling nonetheless.

"Here, I grew these for you, as thanks." Venomous pulled a bouquet of flowers from behind his back. "And congratulations on finally getting published."

Arin beamed, leaning in to sniff.

"Oh, and be careful – they're highly toxic."

She froze, mid-sniff. She looked up at him with a frown.

"Kidding." He grinned, mischief in his expression. "Well, sort of. They are extremely poisonous if they're ingested, so if you ever need to off someone…"

"Er. Thank you?" Arin suspected that was his way of being nice. Villains, what could you do?

"So, I'll see you next Saturday?" Venomous asked.

"10 AM sharp," she confirmed.

She smiled, watching as the two villains left, hand in hand.


End file.
